Dragon’s Lair, a shark-tank style innovation pitch event hosted by Fort Bragg announced 1st Lt. Mahdi Al-Husseini, 25th Infantry Division from Hawaii as the winner of its fifth episode this morning. 

The competition was held yesterday at Fort Bragg where seven participants pitched a variety of their ideas in 10-minute presentations to the Army.  

Al-Husseini pitched the idea to leverage artificial intelligence to train, measure and record pilot performance through iterative feedback. 

“Mahdi’s program has the potential to revolutionize the way our army manages aviation practices and pilot and crew performance,” said Col. Joe Buccino, XVIII Airborne Corps Innovation Officer. “This was among the most well-developed, visionary concepts we’ve seen come into Dragon’s Lair thus far.”

As the winner of the competition, Al-Husseini won the Meritorious Service Medal, a four-day pass off work and the option to attend the Army school of his choice. 

“I hope that the technology introduced and this artificially intelligent task training system for Army aviators will continue ongoing development and ultimately make a meaningful difference to our Warfighters,” Al-Husseini said. 

His proposed pilot-performance program will move forward into implementation across all XVIII Airborne Corps aviation units. 

“Mahdi’s presentation during Dragon’s Lair leverages technology available in the marketplace today,” said Jared Summers, XVIII Airborne Corps chief tech officer. “His presentation showcased computer vision in an innovative way to create value and solve a user-problem for the warfighter.”

Al-Husseini won by two points out of a possible 275 total points in an assessment graded by the 11 panelists. Following him in second place was Lt. Col. Jason Harlan, assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division for the M1 Abrams tanks self-recovery system he developed in his garage using his own resources.

“For us to have these soldiers come in from Hawaii, Georgia, Kentucky and all over the Army, what it means for us is soldiers have ideas, they see inefficiencies, they see problems in their daily lives and solve for those problems,” Buccino said. “And for us Dragon’s Lair is about embracing the soldier, the idea, bringing it up here to the headquarters. Then the next step is implementing it.” 

Initially, soldiers submit their ideas through a third-party website which is reviewed every three months by the Dragon’s Innovation Council who reviews and selects the candidates that will move forward to present at the Dragon’s Lair events. 

“This is the biggest one we’ve done and is the best one yet in a sense because it represents a full diversity of thought and innovation across the army,” he added. “There are different ideas being presented from very complicated AI algorithms for pilot performance feedback to a new policy to treat soldiers who have had to come out of a traumatic experience with sexual assault, so we’ve got a wide range of ideas, and that’s what Dragon’s Lair is about.”

A press release sent out by Fort Bragg this morning mentioned that in addition to implementing Al-Husseini’s winning idea, American’s Contingency Corps will implement some aspect of each of the seven ideas presented at Dragon’s Lair, Episode 5,  

The innovations include solar-panel battery charging system, a new system to care for survivors of sexual assault and augmented realtiy tools to improve maintenance training.

Buccino emphasized the importance of Dragon’s Lair and the need for innovative ideas from soldiers by pointing out that the leadership may not always have all the ideas and solutions because they don’t see all the problems. 

“In the Army, you hear it all the time, ‘people first, people first.’ Okay, we are doing it. It’s getting the idea and uplifting that idea, and that’s the whole concept of Dragon’s Lair,” he added.