Army's First Interactive iPad Book Lets You Finger-Swipe Through Afghanistan

The Army has no shortage of battlefield maps. But until Friday, it didn't have many that animate troop movements or enemy positions at the touch of a fingertip. Now, explains Command Sgt. Major Joe B. Parson, Jr., 'if I flick a finger, you don't change the page, you change the picture.'

That's the added value of Vanguard of Valor, a platoon-level recent history of the Afghanistan war published by the Army's Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, part of the ground force's brain trust. There's a musty paper edition. But the Army's more excited about the iPad edition that debuted on Friday in the iTunes store.

Vanguard of Valor is primarily a teaching tool, meant to instruct the mid-career officers who pass through the Center about the lessons learned from years of grueling war in Afghanistan. The enhanced iPad edition is a step up from previous Army digitized books: It's the first immersive, interactive Army e-book, replacing the simple PDF-style scans with dynamic animations of the warzone. Maps shift, videos load, audio plays and pictures scroll to complement the text.

The book digitizes and updates the traditional Army practice of recounting 'lessons learned' from its conflicts. The eight stories it contains recount the experiences of platoons deployed to Afghanistan's rugged southern and eastern regions, mostly on the border with Pakistan and mostly during the 2010-12 troop surge. 'These are lessons that could easily be lost,' says the Combined Arms Center's Parson, whose historians and developers created the book. 'When children aren't around, it's a telltale sign that something bad is about to happen. That's something to be aware of, the change in our environment.'

Parson said the physical book is already taught in the Combined Arms Center, but the Center will at shifting up its curriculum to incorporate the iPad version. Soldiers, like other students, bring their iPads to class anyway.

Much as Vanguard of Valor is primarily a tool for military education, nothing's stopping any military history buff with an iPad from downloading the book. (It's free.) 'If you've got no military affiliation, it'll give you a sense of how difficult this fight has been,' Parson says. 'If nothing else, you'll gain empathy for the situation individuals were placed in.'

Vanguard of Valor is an iOS phenomenon for now, but the Army's looking at creating immersive editions for tablets running other operating systems, too.