Dragon’s Lair Program

What is it?

The Dragon’s Lair program is focused on encouraging creative thinking across the U.S. Army. This program solicits ideas from Soldiers of any career field or background, and their families, in order to spur innovation to a better quality of life and improve the service as a whole.

What are the current and past efforts of the Army?

Army Futures Command drives enterprise-level modernization efforts across the Total Force Army. In support, the XVIII Airborne Corps developed the Dragon’s Lair Program to encourage creative thinking across its ranks that may benefit units in the corps.

• October 2020- Developed a prototype for an emerging concept, the RangeFinder App. This is a mobile application for scheduling and coordinating training areas
• November 2020- More than 180 Soldiers submitted innovative concepts. The submissions were narrowed to the final finalists by the XVIII Airborne Corps Innovation Council, a group of leaders within the Corps focused on Army modernization. The Soldier with the winning solution earned a four-day pass and entry into the Army school of his or her choice.

What continued efforts does the Army have planned?

The Army will continue to pursue a pathway for implementation for innovative concepts that will arise out of the future Dragon’s Lair challenges.

• The XVIII Airborne Corps and Army Futures Command will work in concert to develop and implement solutions identified in previous Dragon’s Lair challenges
• The XVIII Airborne Corps will host the third Dragon’s Lair challenge in January 2021

Why is this important to the Army?

The Army is adapting innovating and adapting concepts, equipment to prepare to meet future operational challenges. The Dragon Lair’s program develops and implements the Soldier-identified creative concepts to modernize the Army.

The Army must grow its operational force by reshaping it to be more robust and successful in all domains along with modernizing it with the best weapons and equipment available.