REDSTONE ARSENAL, Ala. (September 22, 2026) – DEVCOM Aviation & Missile Center hosted its first Modernization Hack-A-Thon this August, an event offering employees the opportunity to step away from their day-to-day tasks and rapidly develop cutting-edge technical capabilities directly supporting the Center’s mission.
What exactly is a Hack-A-Thon? These events give individuals the opportunity to engage in collaborative engineering in a fast-paced setting based around exploratory computer programming. Hack-A-Thons also help further develop skills such as teamwork, problem-solving, communication and time management.
“This event is about innovation and learning,” said Evans Hall, project coordinator. “Our leadership encourages us to constantly upskill, and the Hack-A-Thon provides a unique environment to do that. While our formal development processes are necessarily rigorous, this event allows our teams to explore creative solutions with speed and agility, generating prototypes that can inform our mainstream efforts.”
The DEVCOM AvMC team focused on upskilling civilian engineers and fostering rapid innovation to modernize technical infrastructure and accelerate software delivery. Key areas emphasized include Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Cloud architecture, quantum computing, and Development and Operations processes for automating and expediting software releases. Across the board, every participating team leveraged agentic AI powered by the Center’s Scout solution to autonomously assist with task planning, code generation, and testing.
Forty-two participants signed up to compete in the inaugural event. The majority joined in person, while members from Joint Base Langley-Eustis participated online.
The Hack-A-Thon was broken into two separate categories. The first was “Bring Your Own Idea” where teams brought their own unique ideas or solutions. The primary requirement was that the modernization prototype must relate to Fires or Maneuver Air operations and align with DEVCOM AvMC’s strategic modernization initiatives.
The second category was “The Core Challenge” which was hosted entirely within the Center’s Software Principles for Development Solutions, or SPDS, platform, the Center’s cloud-based, certified DevSecOps environment. By leveraging SPDS, development teams operated within an accredited pipeline, working to accelerate acquisition timelines and deliver enhanced capabilities to the warfighter by automating manual processes and expediting software releases.
The event was a first for organizers and an opportunity to learn when planning for future events but considered an overall success for organizers and participants.
“We have been working with center staff wanting to plan for another in the future,” Hall said. “We’re going to use this as a lesson learned and maybe do something a little bit different. One hundred percent call it a success. Even the teams that said they didn’t have much to present shared that they learned a lot, even if they didn’t have what they would consider success. They said they were able to learn a new skill and would try some new things out.”
Having the opportunity to innovate outside the daily rigor and invest in trying something different can greatly improve the approach to your work, Hall added. The DEVCOM AvMC Modernization Hack-A-Thon gave participants the chance to do just that while also learning from team members.
Justin Wynn said he valued the chance to get out of his comfort zone and was pushed to dive into systems he does not typically interact with in day-to-day work.
“Working with teammates who aren’t technical gave me a much better understanding of the problems they wrestle with every day and how our tools actually get used,” Wynn added. “It felt like hands‑on upskilling and cross‑team learning all at once, instead of just another class or video.”
Caleb Wong also valued hands-on learning and the pressure of the fast-paced delivery requirements.
“That relentless time crunch strips away the safety net of tutorials forcing you to learn on the fly, adapt instantly, and embrace the chaos of real-time troubleshooting to make things work when it matters most,” Wong said. “That is where basic knowledge transforms into true, unshakeable expertise."
“Future events will challenge participants to think about innovation, learning, and collaboration,” Hall said. “A major success of this hackathon was the cross-pollination of ideas. We had teams sharing solutions from different parts of the Center, breaking down silos and fostering a more unified, innovative command culture.”
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About DEVCOM AvMC: DEVCOM AvMC is the nexus of Army aviation and missile modernization, where the operational requirements of Transformation and Training Command (T2COM) are fused with the acquisition strategies of the Portfolio Acquisition Executives (PAE). As the Army’s primary source of deep technical expertise, the Center provides the innovative science and responsive life-cycle engineering that allows the PAEs to execute programs at speed, delivering the asymmetric capabilities required to ensure our Soldiers dominate future conflicts.
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