Hot military apps: Tactical - Off Duty, Technology - Navy Times

Hot military apps: Tactical

A listing of some of the top tactical apps available for you.

Soldiers’ Guidebook

Army troops will have a hard time finding a better collection of tools and information to stay on top of their game. It’s just the latest app from Cherry Point, N.C., Marine 1st Lt. Eric Pratt, whose multiservice offerings also include Army Physical Fitness Test Calculator, Marine Corps PFT Calculator, Navy Physical Fitness Assessment Calculator and USMC Combat Fitness Test Calculator, among others.

• Price: $2.99.

• For: iOS.

Tactical Nav

Developed by artilleryman Capt. Jonathan Springer while in Afghanistan, this is social media meets military navigation. It does a lot of the usual GPS-enabled stuff — including mapping and storing routes and waypoints — but also allows you to take location-stamped photos and share them with other Tactical Nav subscribers via email. Handy red-light option will help save your night vision, too. (Don’t confuse this one with Tactical Navigator, released a few days later by another developer, which hardly measures up.)

• Price: $5.99.

• For: iOS.

MGRS Tools

Shorthand for Military Grid Reference System, MRGS Tools was developed by Capt. Bill Blankenship and Lt. Col. Alex Simon, the same Army officers who created Flash to Bang, the simple-but-elegant app for determining the distance of an explosion. The basic MGRS Tools apps is free and includes a calculator to aid with some of the more time-intensive military navigation tasks, along with several in-app purchase options for more advanced features, including a process for determining the grid coordinates for a distant target.

• Price: Free.

• For: iOS.

iCorps

The idea for iCorps came as Staff Sgt. Andrew Dunn found himself increasingly “upset when I asked young troops about basic knowledge and they had no clue.” So, starting with a lab project while working on his software engineering degree, he decided to give them a tool to change that — an app packed with nothing less than “everything a Marine should know.” One of the highest-rated military apps around.

• Price: $1.99.

• For: iOS and Android.