Photo By Maj. Peter Sulzona | Maj. Kyle McDermott, U.S. Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC), showcases his...... read more read more
WASHINGTON — More than 200 Soldiers, civilians, and technologists from across the Army came together last week for Vantage Edge, a first-of-its-kind competition challenging participants to redesign the landing page of Vantage — one of the Army's premier enterprise data and analytics platforms.
Held virtually from February 11–13 over Microsoft Teams, the three-day event drew participants spanning Active Duty, National Guard, and Reserve components, as well as Army civilians and contractors and numerous Joint partners — all united by a shared drive to make the Army's data tools more accessible, intuitive, and impactful for every Soldier and leader.
Vantage Edge was designed with a twofold purpose. First, it served as a competition to crowdsource a best-of-breed solution for redesigning the Vantage landing page — leveraging the collective ingenuity of Soldiers and civilians across the total force. But equally important, the event was a deliberate effort to spread awareness of Vantage itself and the vast capabilities, tools, and solutions that exist or user-built on the platform.
Despite being one of the Army's most powerful enterprise data environments, many Soldiers and leaders remain unaware of the high-value dashboards and data products already available on Vantage — tools like ATIS, Weapons 360, and First Alert that provide ready-made, authoritative insights across readiness, logistics, and personnel domains. That lack of awareness has led to duplicative development efforts at the unit level, wasted resources, and missed opportunities to leverage a "single source of truth."
By bringing over 200 participants into the Vantage ecosystem for three days — exposing them to technical demonstrations, existing dashboards, API capabilities, and direct interaction with Palantir engineers and the Army Software Factory — Vantage Edge ensured that every participant walked away with a deeper understanding of what the platform can already do for them and their formations.
"I can't take credit for this — the Soldiers did all the heavy lifting," said MAJ Zak Daker, the AI Advisor to the Army's Vice Chief of Staff. "What Vantage Edge proved is that the grit and entrepreneurial spirit already exist in our ranks. You give Soldiers a problem, point them in the right direction, and they will run through walls to solve it. We had infantrymen, logisticians, and analysts with the full spectrum of coding backgrounds, building real solutions on an enterprise platform in less than 72 hours. That's not something you can teach — that's the initiative and drive that defines our Army. But beyond the competition itself, we wanted every participant to go back to their unit and say, 'Did you know this tool already exists? Did you know you can already access this data?' That ripple effect across the force is just as valuable as the winning solution."
Vantage Edge was organized by team members of the Army’s Vice Chief of Staff in close collaboration with the Army Chief Information Office (CIO), Palantir Technologies, and the Army Software Factory (ASWF). The event exemplified the kind of cross-functional, public-private partnership that Army senior leaders have championed as essential to maintaining technological overmatch and accelerating digital transformation.
The competition centered on a real and pressing challenge. Vantage's current landing page had not been updated in over two years. While it served its initial purpose, the interface had become developer-focused, unintuitive, and failed to surface the platform's most impactful tools. The result: unnecessary duplicative development at the unit level, increased data-manipulation costs, and barriers preventing leaders from quickly accessing enterprise solutions the Army had already invested in building.
Competitors were tasked with designing a new landing page that addressed multiple user types and use cases — from a senior leader seeking readiness data to a squad leader tracking Army Fitness Test scores — while maintaining a clean user interface, minimizing button clicks, and preserving Vantage's core differentiator: API access to data products. 16 teams ultimately entered the arena to compete.
The competition kicked off on Wednesday, February 11, with opening remarks from the Army’s deputy CIO and Chief Data and Analytics Officer, Dr Markowitz, followed by technical demonstrations that doubled as awareness-building sessions. Palantir’s Daniel Stulski led a deep dive on Ontology Software Development Kit (OSDK) Custom Widgets, while Korie Wagner walked participants through AI Forward Deployed Engineers (FDE) and widget creation. The Army Software Factory showcased powerful dashboards and existing platform capabilities — giving many participants their first real look at the breadth of what Vantage already offers.
Throughout the event, Palantir dedicated Vantage engineers were available via the Teams channel to provide real-time technical support — a testament to the depth of industry partnership that made Vantage Edge possible. These interactions not only helped teams build their solutions but also served as hands-on training, equipping participants with skills and knowledge they could carry back to their units.
On Thursday, teams worked intensively to build and refine their solutions, with Palantir engineers continuing to provide guidance and troubleshooting support.
By Friday morning, teams presented their projects to an expert judging panel in live demonstrations followed by question-and-answer sessions, tuning in from seven different time zones to pitch their solutions. Competitors were also encouraged to present even if their solutions were not fully built, supplementing with PowerPoint or whiteboard presentations — reinforcing that the competition valued creative thinking and initiative as much as technical execution.
Following panel deliberations and approval by Dr. Markowitz, winners were selected and announced. First Place’s MAJ Kyle McDermott from ATEC
What made Vantage Edge truly remarkable was the diversity of its participants. Teams included software developers, data scientists, intelligence analysts, logistics officers, infantrymen, and civilians — many with no formal coding background prior to the event. The competition proved that when given the right tools, mentorship, and opportunity, Soldiers from every military occupational specialty and background can contribute meaningfully to the Army's digital transformation.
"You didn't need to be a software engineer to compete," noted one participant. "You just needed to care about making things better for Soldiers."
For many, the event was also their introduction to Vantage's full potential. Participants who arrived knowing little about the platform left as informed advocates — equipped to share what they learned with peers and leaders across their organizations.
The competition did not end with the awards ceremony. Winning solutions entered a beta testing phase from February 16 through March 13, during which they will be evaluated in real-world conditions by actual Vantage users across the Army. Once testing is complete, a hybrid solution from the competitors will be the Army’s new Vantage homepage.
This deliberate pathway — from competition to testing to fielding — underscores the Army's commitment to not just encouraging innovation but operationalizing it at speed and scale. Furthermore, the collective team is continuing to build on this momentum with the next planned event March 9 - 13 dubbed Vantage Edge Artificial Intelligence Platform (AIP) Competition.
Vantage Edge represents a growing movement within the Army to harness the talent already within its ranks while simultaneously building digital literacy across the force. By pairing Soldiers with industry partners like Palantir and organizations like the Army Software Factory and CIO, the Army is creating repeatable models for crowdsourced innovation that deliver real capability to the warfighter — and ensure the force knows how to use it.
“What really stood out to us, as Palantir, is just how much talent we have across the Army. We saw strong technical and design skills from people with all sorts of backgrounds. It’s really exciting and we want to bring more of you into this effort for future projects.” -Dana Schrock, Palantir’s Army Vantage Program Lead The event's dual impact — producing a best-of-breed solution while creating over 200 new Vantage-aware advocates across the Army — demonstrates that competitions like Vantage Edge can serve as both innovation engines and awareness campaigns.
As the Army continues to modernize its digital infrastructure and embrace artificial intelligence, events like Vantage Edge send a clear message: every Soldier is a potential innovator, the best ideas can come from anywhere in the formation, and the tools to make a difference are already at their fingertips.
For more information about Vantage and Army data initiatives, visit the Vantage Edge Hub or contact the Office of the Vice Chief of Staff of the Army
| Date Taken: | 02.19.2026 |
| Date Posted: | 02.19.2026 16:23 |
| Story ID: | 558421 |
| Location: | WASHINGTON, DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA, US |
| Web Views: | 12 |
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