ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. (Nov. 22, 2021) — The United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM)-led Tactical Assault Kit (TAK) Product Center, in partnership with the Army, will host the eighth annual TAK Offsite in Colorado Springs, Colorado, from Nov. 30 to Dec. 3.
TAK is a map-based software application that enables coordination among operational users in the Department of Defense and other federal agencies with features such as positioning data, chat, mission planning and shared overlays. It is compatible with Android, Apple iOS and Windows.
“The TAK offsite is an excellent opportunity to collaborate with mission partners across various operational use cases to share feedback, to expand the capability, and to continuously make the products better,” said Bill Newmeyer of the Army’s Command, Control, Computers, Communications, Cyber, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (C5ISR) Center, where the TAK Product Center resides.
The C5ISR Center, part of Army Futures Command, supports the TAK development and user community by providing engineering expertise for the development and technical management of the core TAK software platforms as well as through participation in a Configuration Steering Board (CSB). Program Executive Office – SOF Digital Applications, part of USSOCOM, funds the product center, chairs the Configuration Steering Board and sponsors the TAK Offsite.
“The TAK community has grown from a dozen users to a hundred users to now over 200,000 users,” said Ryan McLean, TAK Product Center director. “As more users adopt TAK, we’ve continued to make TAK products more widely available. The TAK CSB amplifies and extends that growth through events such as the TAK Offsite.”
The TAK Offsite brings value to all stakeholders – users, developers, program managers, and even to people and organizations new to TAK. Real-world users attend and learn about new features and integration possibilities within TAK, while developers learn about how the TAK application programming interface (API) and core capabilities are constantly improving. Many program managers also attend the event to promote their initiatives that use TAK.
“TAK has been successful largely due to our open-architecture, open-source model that’s very developer-friendly,” said McLean. “That means staying synchronized with industry and listening to the needs of equipment providers and solution builders. TAK grows and improves not because of TAK alone, but because of TAK’s ability to break down the old barriers to system integration.”
As with previous years, the 2021 TAK Offsite will foster efforts to get more feedback to improve platforms and generate cross-team collaboration. This confluence of minds spurs the new waves of innovation in TAK development, integration, and use cases.
“This is a can’t-miss event for anyone developing situational awareness and geospatial capabilities. Anyone who attends should expect full immersion in the TAK community across four days packed with content,” said McLean. “If you use TAK, if you develop TAK, if you field capabilities that use TAK, or if you just want to learn about TAK, this is where you need to be.”
To register, attendees must create a TAK.gov account at tak.gov. Attendees may then register for the event under the Events page of TAK.gov. Questions should be directed to support@tak.gov with questions.