82nd Airborne soldiers William Rambin and Jesus Naranjo were 8 miles deep in the pine forests surrounding Fort Bragg as part of a training exercise when they got called to shoot the mortar system they were carrying.
Their squad was a mile outside of the shooting range. By the time they got where they needed to be, took off their 65-pound rucksacks that carried the mortar system and readied the system to fire, it was too late. The mission was a failure.
“We thought to ourselves, ‘How can we fix this issue of not being able to employ the battalion commander’s most casualty-producing weapon?’” Sgt. 1st Naranjo said to a crowd gathered at the Airborne Innovation Lab on Fort Bragg on June 25.
Naranjo and 1st Lt. Rambin couldn’t find an existing solution. So they built one themselves.
Their 81mm quick emplacement mount is composed of a 3D-printed plastic cone, a metal ball hitch and some straps. It secures the mortar system to an infantry squad vehicle, allowing for faster travel to firing points and deployment.
Rambin and Naranjo’s mount was one of 10 inventions produced by teams of XVIII Airborne Corps soldiers on display as part of Dragon’s Lair, the corps’ annual innovation competition.
The U.S. Department of Defense has a decades-long history of turning to private defense contractors like Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Boeing to develop the latest military tech. But for 11 years now, Dragon’s Lair has asked soldiers to develop solutions to problems of readiness, lethality and modernization they see in their training and on the front lines.
Dragon’s Lair is similar to ABC’s “Shark Tank.” Teams of soldiers from across the XVIII Airborne Corps’ four divisions have five minutes to pitch their invention to a panel of judges made up of senior members from the Department of Defense development community and strategic commanders from the Army.
“It’s about enabling our soldiers to get after real problems that are affecting them every single day,” XVIII Airborne Corps Assistant Commander of Operations and Canadian Army Brig. Gen. Jay MacKeen said. “There’s some great stuff that’s coming from institutional Army, but these are soldier solutions to soldier problems.”
For Commanding General of the 75th U.S. Army Reserve Innovation Command Maj. Gen. Michelle Link, innovations pitched at Dragon’s Lair are fulfilling the purpose of the Army Transformation Initiative. The initiative seeks to “deliver critical warfighting capabilities, optimize our force structure and eliminate waste and obsolete programs,” according to a letter to soldiers from Army Secretary Daniel Driscoll and Chief of Staff of the Army Gen. Randy George. Part of those efforts include integrating drones, artificial intelligence and other “emerging technology” into more formations.
The initiative came out of an April directive from U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth that directed Army leadership to transform “the Army now for future warfare.”
“Nobody owns innovation,” Link said. “Innovation is something that resides across the entire Army, and we’re working with our partners to collaborate and harness the great ideas from the youngest junior enlisted soldier all the way up through the ones that have been here for quite some time.”
Rambin and Naranjo’s invention won Dragon’s Lair. As winners, the XVIII Airborne Corps Innovation Team and Department of Defense development companies will help them build and install their mount onto infantry squad vehicles for the corps’ mortar platoons.
The pair also received a Meritorious Service Medal and a military school of choice.
Entering the Dragon’s Lair
Dragon’s Lair runners-up Spc. Alexander Soto and Sgt. Talen Valerio of the 82nd Airborne had a drone problem. The size and weight of the Army’s hardshell Pelican drone cases leave little room in rucksacks for other necessities, Soto said.
“It takes up well over half of the amount of space that we could have used for other things, like water, food,” Soto said. “You know, things to survive.”
Soto added that unpacking and repacking the drone case can take three to five minutes, leaving soldiers exposed to indirect fire.
Soto said he was surprised no one had thought of a drone case that can attach to the outside of a paratrooper’s ruck before he and Valerio presented one on Wednesday.
Their case is modular with foam inserts that can be designed and swapped out as new drones are built.
“As the drones evolve, the case and the molds inside of it also will,” Soto said. “Anything will fit in there, as long as there’s a mold that’s made for it, which any unit with a 3D printer can have printed.”
Although Soto and Valeria didn’t win Dragon’s Lair, the XVIII Airborne Corps is helping get their cases for the corps’ 395 drones.
Influenced by combat
Mackeen said Dragon’s Lair empowers soldiers, who are the experts when it comes to identifying which technology needs to be improved to fight today’s wars.
“Nine times out of 10 it does, and it’s usually a better solution than what we could have come up with,” Mackeen said. “It’s absolutely great that we can tap into that brain power. Our soldiers are absolutely our best assets, and they prove it day in, day out.”
From almost being run over while setting up a wet gap crossing over a body of water to running out of water during an operation, every team’s invention addressed a real problem the soldiers had faced in recent years.
Staff Sgt. Gabriel Mawson was shooting an Excalibur round, a GPS-guided artillery munition, at Camp Clark in Afghanistan, when it missed the target. He would later find out the round missed because of a jamming scenario, when an electromagnetic frequency disrupts those necessary for electronic equipment to function.
The Army has the equipment to detect these disruptive signals, but Mawson said it costs $2 million, making it inaccessible to most units. That’s why he built one for $750.
Mawson’s electromagnetic spectrum detector is built from an Oculus headset, a Raspberry Pi computer and a commercial electromagnetic spectrum analyzer he bought on Amazon. Using augmented reality, the detector presents a heatmap to help a soldier identify the location of a selected electromagnetic frequency.
“It is pretty much a tool to see the unknown,” said Mawson, an electromagnetic spectrum manager with the 18th Field Artillery Brigade stationed at Fort Bragg.
Link said the development of low-cost solutions like Mawson’s is part of the beauty of Dragon’s Lair. Most inventions presented were cheap. Rambin and Naranjo’s 81mm mount costs $120, and Valerio and Soto’s drone case costs anywhere from $100 to $150, depending on how many the Army orders.
“As we look at our adversaries and their ability to adapt quickly over time, it really serves as a window of opportunity for us as well to recognize that we have to be faster, we have to be agile,” Link said. “We have to be able to focus on commercially available, cheap equipment versus programs of record that take many years to come to fruition and come to bear out in the field.”
CityView Reporter Morgan Casey is a corps member with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. Morgan’s reporting focuses on health care issues in and around Cumberland County and can be supported through the News Foundation of Greater Fayetteville.