Ukraine’s fight for survival with a bigger and better-equipped enemy is forcing the country’s army to swiftly seek innovations.
The latest modern solution being used to substitute bureaucratic Soviet army operations is the recently launched Army+ app, which aims to make the armed forces “paperless.”
Presented with fanfare by President Volodymyr Zelensky and top government officials at an event on Aug. 8, it has been slower to be embraced by its target audience — soldiers — compared to the previous state digital product, Reserv+.
“We are transforming the Ukrainian military into the army of the future,” Kateryna Chernohorenko, Ukraine’s deputy defense minister in charge of digital transformation efforts, said during the app’s presentation.
While Army+ registered over 150,000 Ukrainian troops within weeks, Reserv+ was used by 3 million military-aged people to update their contact information in the government database over two months since its launch last May.
Although it is for now limited to a few basic functions, plans for the fully expanded Army+ app are much more ambitious.
The government hopes to create the first-ever unified military database in Ukraine and develop a full-fledged digital interface for interaction between soldiers, army commanders, and the state. It should eventually provide a wide range of state services, becoming an army counterpart of Diia, a mobile application that citizens have been using for public services dubbed “a state in a smartphone,” launched in 2020 as the flagship of Ukraine’s digital innovation.
If this goal is reached, it could mark a fundamental shift in how Ukraine manages its one-million-strong army. It would also put Ukraine at the forefront of military innovation, with the U.S. and other NATO military alliance countries using similar systems in their armed forces. Ukraine would stand out as the only country to develop and implement such a system while fighting an existential war.
However, the app’s implementation is becoming the biggest challenge, stifled by the army's persisting bureaucracy, soldiers’ distrust of government reforms, and some problems with the legal framework around the app.
How Army+ works
The Army+ app requires a smartphone and Internet access, setting some entry requirements for soldiers as not all have smartphones and stable connectivity – for example, the soldiers holding front-line trenches.
Soldiers register on the app and get unique electronic ID numbers. Then, they can choose a template to create a report online and send it for review to their commander, who can either approve it online, decline it, or forward it to a higher command.
Only 11 types of reports out of nearly 200 used in military service are currently available on the app. However, this is the first time soldiers have the opportunity to send reports digitally instead of submitting them on paper, which is notoriously time-consuming and frustrating for the military.
The current functionality of the app allows soldiers to use it to request various types of vacations, medical treatment, and financial assistance. In the near future, Army+ developers plan to add more, including the widely requested option to file digital reports to write off used and destroyed military equipment. This has been causing major problems for soldiers who would risk their lives rather than use a battle drone for fear of having to explain its loss with a bureaucratic paper report.
Army+ aims to protect soldiers from bureaucracy
In the absence of laws regulating most of the reports’ content and appearance, soldiers have consistently complained about paper reports getting rejected for groundless formal reasons. Some commanders or army clerks set their own “in-house” rules, such as the pen color or the type of paper for the reports.
The order, passed by the Defense Ministry two days before the app’s launch, legalized the use of digital reports and formalized the requirements for paper ones. The regulation left only basic content requirements, forbade setting up any demands on their appearance, and ordered commanders to provide specific reasons for the report’s rejection.
“I rate this order very highly,” Daria Tarasenko, a lawyer from Kyiv who often explains military-related laws on her Facebook page for almost 100,000 followers, told the Kyiv Independent. “It was prepared by people with knowledge of army realities and judicial practice.”
But while the Defense Ministry order has been praised for its hands-on approach, it lacks a clear legal requirement for army commanders to use the Army+ app, which is essential for soldiers to start filing electronic reports.
Since the app is a voluntary alternative to paperwork, soldiers can only file reports online if they have their commander’s unique ID number given after registration, which they can use to address the report. That means that before soldiers can use the app to file reports, their commander needs to get on it first.
“The regulation doesn’t have a direct order for the commanders to use it,” said Tarasenko. “But it says that each commander is obliged to tell his subordinates his own ID number.”
It also concerns the army commanders on different levels since the reports are supposed to be sent higher up in the chain of command until they reach the person responsible for making a final decision.
In response to numerous queries from army members to clarify the matter, the Defense Ministry posted an explainer on Aug. 29. It advised soldiers to report commanders who declined to share their ID numbers to the Army+ page managed by the ministry, as this constitutes a violation of the ministry’s new order.
“It is not to punish them,” Chernohorenko told the Kyiv Independent a week after the launch of the app, referring to the commanders who decline to use the app.
“It’s to learn (from them) what stops them from using the app and do what we can to help,” she said.
Dinara Khalilova
The app team working ‘to win the army’s trust’
“Implementation (of the app) is our biggest challenge,” Roman Zagorodnii, the project manager at the defense ministry in charge of Army+, told the Kyiv Independent.
Previously a soldier in Ukraine’s airborne forces, Zagorodnii said that a small department in the ministry composed chiefly of military personnel with front-line and clerical experience is working with the General Staff to implement the reform on two levels in the army.
On the first level, which Zagorodnii called “top-down,” project advocates inside the army talk to their fellow commanders from both headquarters and the front line to “make them fall in love with the project.” As of Aug. 26, nearly 100 people in different command positions advocated for the app, he said.
The second level is the opposite, explaining the new practice to the army clerks in the units that often process soldiers’ reports, so that they could spread it “bottom-up.” In two weeks after the launch of the app, the ministry’s department hosted two open-call webinars to explain the app to the clerks which gathered around 800-1,400 people each, Zagorodnii said.
“We are military ourselves. We understand that implementation (of this app) depends on trust,” Zagorodnii added. “We are working to win (the army’s) trust.”
According to Chernohorenko, the ministry is aiming to have 500,000 military personnel – roughly half of Ukraine’s army – registered on the Army+ app by the end of the year. So far, some 150,000 have registered.
Oksana Parafeniuk
Soldiers cautious about the new app
Most soldiers interviewed by the Kyiv Independent for this article were cautious about the app, unsure that it would make a real difference.
Some were unaware of the plans to develop the app beyond its current basic functions despite extensive interviews given by the officials. The soldiers spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to talk to the press.
Although officials said that digital reporting, the app's primary function, was developed after surveying around 70,000 acting military personnel, indicating huge demand for it, some functional problems of the new product contributed to some soldiers’ disappointment.
As with the Reserv+ app launched months ago, people sometimes can’t log in to Army+ because various government databases don’t have up-to-date information about them. The Army+ team collects feedback on these cases and sends it to the draft centers responsible for the citizens’ military records. The information on each soldier will be updated manually.
“We are just a storefront for the problems that start in government databases,” Zagorodnii said.
Despite the problems, Chernohorenko calls the rate of the app’s spreading among the military “incredibly high.” It is laying the foundation for the new way Ukraine will manage its army in the future.
Data-driven decisions to win
“Until now, there was no unified digital state register of the military with their service records. We are launching both the register and the app,” Chernohorenko said.
Some data about the army that the Defense Ministry can instantly monitor with Army+ have never been readily available. The app’s development team hopes that data-driven decisions will give Ukraine’s army command an advantage over Russia.
“The fact that we’re able to monitor the statistics of reports the soldiers file at any moment is already mind-blowing,” Zagorodnii said.
The data-driven approach has proven effective before. During the Army+ presentation, Chernohorenko claimed the destruction of $15 billion worth of Russian military equipment, mostly with relatively cheap drones, thanks to the use of another digital product, Delta. It was developed by Ukraine’s army for situational awareness on the battlefield, collecting data about the movements of Russian forces and sharing it within army ranks.
“Ukraine has positioned itself as a leader in battlefield innovation,” said a NATO statement on July 12, after Delta was tested for interoperability within a NATO environment this summer.
But before Army+ has a chance to change the culture of interaction between troops and their government, it is for now only gradually being downloaded onto soldiers’ smartphones.
“We just got the info and instructions for Army+ from the command,” a drone operator who goes by the callsign Panda told the Kyiv Independent on Aug. 29. She previously said that people in her unit couldn’t use the app until their command ordered it.
