Special Operations Command has issued a sole source contract to Teamworks Tactical Solutions for a nutrition app designed to support troops through personalized dietary guidance.

The platform will connect operators with performance dietitians while coordinating with military dining halls.

According to the statement of work, those dietitian services will help develop meal plans intended to “optimize human performance and lethality.”

The system is built to deliver practical nutrition guidance across SOCOM’s widely separated locations.

The platform will connect a team of up to 55 performance dietitians with more than 18,000 tactical troops.

Those specialists will provide “personalized, mission-specific nutrition plans” based on operational needs, personal goals and available food choices.

James Coffos, Teamworks’ chief strategy officer, said the company’s core business includes working with Division 1 athletes, professional athletes and competitors at the Olympic level.

That experience forms the foundation of its work in the tactical community.

“With stakes literally being life and death in the tactical context,” Coffos said, “when looking at a software platform to run your HP program, it makes sense to look to a system like Teamworks, which has been proven at the very highest levels of human performance.”

The contract arrives as the Pentagon works to improve fitness standards and rally against “fat” troops.

Coffos said, however, that the nutrition platform is not a completely new capability for American military personnel.

“SOCOM has actually used this particular product for years, so this isn’t an entirely new capability for them,” Coffos said.

The original contract operated through the Air Force Research Laboratory’s STRONG Lab.

The new contract moves that agreement directly to SOCOM. Coffos said Teamworks worked with SOCOM’s senior performance dietitian to adjust the software so it would better meet the organization’s particular requirements.

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“It’s really a great situation where we have this virtuous circle from sport to military and back again,” Coffos said.

That connection gives the platform experience drawn from both competitive athletics and demanding military environments.

SOCOM troops can use the app to communicate with dietitians in two primary ways.

They can review nutritional ratings for food served at a chow hall or request advice about available options when military dining facilities are unavailable.

“It just removes a lot of friction from the process of making good decisions around what you’re eating, and that in turn frees an operator up to focus on the mission at hand,” Coffos said.

Troops can also adjust their nutrition plans according to food preferences and individual goals.

Coffos cautioned that software cannot replace personal judgment or the discipline required to make sound dietary decisions.

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“You still have to have a basic understanding of nutrition and the willpower to choose what your body needs versus what just looks like it tastes best,” Coffos said.

The app provides the information, but operators still make the choice.

Coffos also addressed SOCOM’s use of the word “lethality” when describing the program’s intended effect. “I’d start by pointing out that ‘lethality’ is SOCOM’s word, not ours,” he said.

“But I’d also gently point out that the word isn’t at all foreign to sports.”

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He cited descriptions of elite athletes to explain the terminology, noting that “Mariano Rivera was described as lethal for 19 seasons and no one thought twice about it” and “Steph Curry is lethal from 30 feet.” In SOCOM’s case, Coffos understands lethality as sustaining physical performance deep into a difficult mission.

“When SOCOM writes ‘lethality,’ I really think what they’re describing is the mile-22 problem,” Coffos said.

“It’s about the quality of the human being at the end of the effort, not the beginning.”

He compared a special operator on a long mission with a marathon runner nearing the end of a race.

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“Watch a marathon at mile 22. You’re absolutely going to see somebody who was running beautifully at mile 18 reduced to a shuffle, and it isn’t because they got less fit in the last four miles. They ran out of fuel,” he said.

For SOCOM, Coffos offered the example of an operator roughly 20 hours into a mission, carrying about 65 pounds of equipment after getting about four hours of sleep.

“That’s the same physiology and the stakes are the only thing that changed,” he said.