New Year, New Mobile Capabilities for Defense Department Users

The U.S. Defense Department will deploy version 1.0 of its unclassified mobility capability on January 31 with plans to expand the capacity to support up to 100,000 users by the end of the fiscal year. The Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) is the lead agency for the program and has made substantial progress toward delivering the capability.

Currently, the program supports 1,800 unclassified mobile devices, including iOS, Samsung and Motorola devices along with 80,000 BlackBerry smartphones. By the end of January, DISA users will begin to transition to the 1.0 capabilities, which include a mobile device management system, an app store, an approved devices list and supported cellular access.

DISA also is working with mission partners, including the Air Force Air Mobility Command and the Army Human Resources Command to service large mission needs that have not been connected to the network in the past.

The next major release in fiscal year 2014 will focus on adding gateway support on the unclassified side along with a capability package to enable editing of Word documents and other Microsoft Office items.