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US Military Issuing iPod Touches To Soldiers
644bd346996 writes "Newsweek has an article about the latest weapons in the US military's arsenal. The iPod Touch and the iPhone are being adapted as general purpose handhelds for soldiers in the field. 'Apple gadgets are proving to be surprisingly versatile. Software developers and the US Department of Defense are developing military software for iPods that enables soldiers to display aerial video from drones and have teleconferences with intelligence agents halfway across the globe. Snipers in Iraq and Afghanistan now use a "ballistics calculator" called BulletFlight, made by the Florida firm Knight's Armament for the iPod Touch and iPhone. Army researchers are developing applications to turn an iPod into a remote control for a bomb-disposal robot (tilting the iPod steers the robot). In Sudan, American military observers are using iPods to learn the appropriate etiquette for interacting with tribal leaders.'"
The real question is: are the military funded applications sold through the Appstore? Or is the US army jail breaking their phones? Or is Apple providing the military special unlocked iPhones?
Perhaps Apple should consider rerunning their 'think different' campaign - this time with a sniper rather than Ghandi.
There are shills on slashdot. Apparently, I'm one of them.
We've all had a good laugh at that clause but they may actually be close to breaching it.
For all your warfare needs, iWar includes anything a soldier needs! Ballistics calculations for artillery, able to say "we mean no harm" in fourhundred and twenty six different languages, a full guide of where to find usable drinking water and much much more. Subscribe now and you'll get free add-ons for a full six months! iWar, saving the lives of soldiers not near you!
Apple is evil after all.
I wonder if you can get these apps from the appstore?
Not. Unless they are getting milspec units I wonder how many lives are being put in danger by using consumer products in such varied environments. The mountains of Afghanistan in winter and the deserts of Iraq are probably both well outside of the rated range of these devices. Not only that but what happens when they get a little wet? I think the average joe shmoe probably treats his electronics a bit better than your average grunt. I personally love the idea of using something like this to control things (my wife has a sewing machine that uses a gameboy color for a controller), I'm just not soldiers are the best target audience for such efforts.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
How well do they take being dropped / shot at? How about systems with Itunes?
According to the Ballmer testing division they make excellent projectiles, they have a 99.9% chance of putting an eye out.
Senators were heard saying quote:"These iPhones have become quite useful to the military. I guess it was a good thing we bought a couple to try out even thought they can't really 'jailbreak' you if you get caught taking bribes.
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed H
Meh..
They are in the store, just $10000 per license. Special government pricing.
Retreating fanboys may be butt-hurt.
Does this mean we can expect a little Slayer in the next iPod commercial?
Groucho not Karl.
See? Another application of Steve Jobs Reality distortion field in action.
Especially against Armies of Developed Nation.
Want an IPOD? Surrender first !
Ever wanted to blow up the **** out of terrorists?
There is an app for that.
I like the idea. Smartphones have enough computing power and sufficient battery life to perform militarily useful functions, with a minimum of added weight to the soldiers gear.
I'm not sure about the platform choice though. One company controls the hardware and software. There are no alternatives in either category that allow you to benefit from prior investments- replacing the hardware or OS requires junking everything you already have. And if the public APIs don't let you do what you need, and Apple can't or won't, it won't do what you need and thats that.
Android, or even Windows Mobile, I think would be better. A lot easier to switch to another device and minimize training costs, a lot easier and cheaper to get a device custom designed and built for specific military applications. These two are far more open- anyone with a properly trained engineering team and some money can make devices for these platforms. You need a specialized gadget integrated? You'll have a dozen companies salivating at defense budget dollars. You'll get it done, balancing capability and cost will be a meaningful choice and you can make it based on the needs and the budget, not because it's the best of limited options.
what happens when they get stolen from the enemy...they will be using our iphones against us...lol...real smart idea
Reminds me of the Toggle character from recent Doonesbury strips. U.S. Soldier in Iraq, he drove a jeep into a roadside bomb after missing warnings because he was using an iPod while driving. Now suffering TBI with chunks of iPod apparently still embedded in his head.
I could shoot 'at' an iPod all day long and not damage it. It's when I accidentally hit the target that there may be problems.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
While, as you say, these are probably being used somewhat past their rated specs, I'm not sure that that is a critical problem. Touches are solid state and reasonably well sealed by default, and I'm sure that shoving them in a Pelican case isn't exactly rocket surgery. I suspect that, in practice, they survive pretty well.
Beyond that, though, there is some truth to the old cliche "the perfect is the enemy of the good". Which are you better off with, the Touch running off-the-shelf software for under $250 a unit now, or the hardened mil-spec widget wending its way through the contractor process that will cost 4 times as much and be available in small quantities in 8 months?
I'd be very disappointed to hear that soldiers had grown critically dependent on the things, and wandered around lost whenever they didn't have them; but, assuming that is avoided, what is the issue? If a device improves your performance, and is available 90% of the time, you are better off on average. If these devices turn out to only last an average of 6 months, then we'll need to treat them as a consumable, hardly a novel procedure. Anybody who operates on the assumption that consumer gear will survive as well in Tora Bora as it does in Starbucks is a moron; but that isn't the only assumption you can operate on.
The right spelling is Gandhi.
Gan as in "gone" + dhi as in the first portion of 'this'.
what could possibly go wrong?
there have been stories about the Chinese sneaking counterfeit chips into military application some of which have made there way into military aircraft.
using a consumer gadget built in china seems like a truly epically bad idea.
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
Besides keeping their investment intact, do you think the Pentagon gives a good goddamn about their soldier's lives? Look at how they treat them once they've been chewed up by years of service.
I guarantee they did an analysis that compared the cost of creating a milspec device with the same capabilities and how much money they would lose if x number of soldiers died due to malfunction. The only thing that could have changed their minds is a powerful politician and a well paid lobbyist with some contracting firm.
And Used in Irak
Milspec can make anything absurdly expensive to produce. This is important when you're building nuclear weapons where failures are very expensive.
It's not so expensive when the cost of one breaking is to simply replace it with another practically free device. Surely the rugged cases they are in will protect them from water and shock.
I dunno, you should ask this guy!
Bush hating
Hey! Some of us absolutely LOVE bush.
Stop the Apple users are gay innuendo!
Much of the clothing, camping, and cold weather gear available at a local REI performs better than what is issued to U.S. soldiers. The military has been slow to adopt consumer products which may work better than what is currently being supplied. This is gradually changing, and it's a change for the better. You don't always need everything to be radiation hardened. Sometimes the best product for a given job is available now, and you don't want to wait for it to be tested ad nauseum, debated, defended, and advocated through the convoluted military procurement process. An iPod Touch is relatively cheap, cheap enough that it's almost disposable. On the other hand, it's too bad there's not an option for AA batteries. Recharging is tough in the field.
Make love, not reality television.
PDAs/Smartphones which have the desired functionality have existed for many years before the iPhone/iPod touch. .NET compact framework is much nicer than developing for the iPhone (background processes, yeah!)
And using C# with the
I am the maverick of Slashdot
I'm glad it's an American company. I just wish the product were made in the USA.
You may remember that, in the earlier days of the Iraq war, soldiers would write home begging for their families to send them Talkabout FRS radios. Yup, those little handheld radios sold in blister packs at Wal-Mart for camping trips.
Those things are, doubtless, less secure, less durable, less resistant to interference, and less powerful than purpose-built military communications systems would be. However, they had one big advantage: they were available to the soldiers when they needed them.
If the military has trouble getting a mature technology like handheld radios into the hands the troops, you can bet that they'd flub something like handheld computers even worse. Sometimes, it's better to just buy the darned things at Wal-Mart.
I should think windows systems with iTunes get shot at all the time in the more ornery parts of the country..
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
Just thinking, don't soldiers wear full gloves everywhere? Last time I heard, you can't use the iPod touch with gloves, you have to use your bare hands.
Back in the day when the Steves ran Apple there was a very strong understanding the Apple won't sell anything to the military for any reason, especially for warfare. Of course the military wasn't ever directly sold Apple products, but they aquired them through third party purchasers and ended up being in the missile silos anyway.
I would imagine this business decree was tossed out with Jobs to help bolster sales any way they could.
That, my friends, is where my fanboy history ends - I bought a PC and ran linux. The rest I read in the flame wars here.
that i've heard so far ("how many lives put at risk from consumer goods", "o, woe is me it's not linux"), i think this is very cool.
i see this more a test of whether or not a small, (maybe) cheap, easy to use, versatile electronic device can and will be welcomed by the military.
given that most people under the age of thirty (if not older) are very comfortable with electronics, i see this working out very well. just wait, the fancy PDAs and other personal electronic devices from your favorite FPS are coming soon.
not only is time travel possible, it's irrelevant.
DEVICE SELECT: DRONE='predator1'
DRONESTATUS=predator1: >IN RANGEONLINEINVENTORY>WEAPONS>AVAIL
WEAPONSAVAIL>MISSILE=0,1,2,3
SELECT MISSILE=3
MISSILE=3> TARGET=2
MISSILE3/TARGET2: 'fire'
ERROR: This device is protected by DRM. Please contact your dealer or reseller, call Apple directly at 1-800-APL-CARE, or you can visit our knowledge base on the World Wide Web at www.apple.com/support/ipodtouch/.
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
...the best laptops you saw that survived and functioned well in a harsh environment?
It is Gandhi...not Ghandi.
More than being a spelling nazi, I guess educated individuals - especially Americans - should know the spelling of Jesus Christ, Mohandas Gandhi, Mother Theresa, Abraham Lincoln etc.
How very Stargatey. In SG1, Carter wields a Tapwave Zodiac in some scenes. In SGA, they have their own custom Atlantis-made doodad (that looks like an everyday Win-mob PDA with some plastic stuck on it) that does everything.
Seriously, tilt control for bomb disposal robots? I hope that is a joke or an assumption and not actually true.
I've never personally owned an iPhone, but I work IT on a college campus therefore have the device shoved in my face literally multiple times a week by students and faculty wanting to show me the new game they just got from the App store. And from what I can tell, the accelerometers are barely accurate enough for simple games, much less expensive military robots.
Even a Wii Remote, which one might consider the "top of the line" in consumer grade accelerometer technology, isn't ideal. If your going to control something remotely, changes are you are going to want something that has a spring or some sort of mechanism to return it to neutral when no pressure is applied. Having to guess how the accelerometer is calibrated and hold the device neutral is far less than ideal.
Anyone find this odd that the Land Warrior program has pretty much been ditched and ran into all sorts of problems, yet they can do a lot of what they wanted to do on a iPod?
I always thought it was odd that it took such a extremely long time to develop something in house that seems to be commercially available already.
iTouch+interface with Predator/Avenger UAV's control brings whole new meaning to 'reach out and touch someone'!
I hope the US Military is running their own 'Appstore' for this!
"Congrat.'s, Commander! For winning the last field exercise, Code name: 'Operation E-bay Amphibious Assault', your Unit/Command has been with credited 10(ten) Credits, which can be used on MilAppStore.gov.mil."
Some of you will take this as sarcasm, or sarcastic hubris. It is meant as neither one.
This would be a cool, efficient, and useful tool for those having to make their decisions while sitting in the hot seat, and I back this 100% from that context/perspective![been there, done that, have the 'salad' for my Mess Dress, and wore out the t-shirt)
I'm green with envy.(pun not intended-I'm 'out to pasture now') Thiss could be a very cool thing for field commanders if used/implemented right.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
That's interesting. Does it also allow you to lock it down so that only sanctioned apps can go on it, or so that only fully approved updates can be installed? They're the kind of features I'd be looking for if I had to approve the phone or touch for military applications.
Well that sort of depends on what backdoors the chinese firmware creators left in.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Using proprietary solutions. Soldiers don't need gimicks they need real solutions. C# and Sharepoint are toys microsoft came up with to blow more money. Apple only solved the problem of picking up the rest of the cash Microsoft couldn't.
I promise you if you'd slap slackware on a couple of old ipaq's, dell's, etc our military would be the most technologically advanced in the world.
God man! We handicap soldiers forcing them to worry about product keys, licenses, and drivers. 150$ for the software to encrypt your laptop sir!
Debian ships out of the box with encryption suppport! YOu could be a total dochebag and still install the freaking thing. What would Alquacka know about linux? You'd confuse the fuking enemy with a new operating system. They can't even load a virus on it.
But oh no, lets spend millions on XP, 2003, and Shitpoint to just be spending money.
I don't know much of anything about Sudan, but I bet that playing with your phone while talking to someone is not going to be considered proper etiquette.
Jesus man, calm down. There's much better comments to spit at than this one. The guy was making a completely innocent joke that had nothing to do with disrespecting the military.
+5 FunnyPostTraumaticStressDisorder FTW!
Although I have nothing wrong in general with items made in another country, I woudl think that military items should be created in the country within which it is issued. Take for example, the recent thing about spys infiltrating the national Grid.
Have a nice day!
ages ago:
http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/hunter-warrior.htm
Steve Jobs promised that closing down the Newton division would result in innovative devices --- who knew it'd take this long --- I still want a device w/ handwriting recognition and a larger screen though.
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
armor for your humvees, and forget about that interceptor body armor youve been needing for 6 months...
youre getting only the finest military hardware to fight this war...including a tactical copy of fallout boys latest album.
Good people go to bed earlier.
They are in the store, just $10000 per license. Standard Apple pricing.
Fixed it for ya.
Which does no good if the damn gun bunnies read the numbers off the computer wrong.
Best Slashdot Co
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcjLEwZqcQI
especially the great applications they have...
like the beer mug,
the animated lighter,
the fish pond,
the cow bell application,
and countless games.
Either the people in charge were bribed good amount of cash to make this happen, or they are true idiots. Either way, they are wasting money for no good reason.
Indeed. Chances are they already have - but consider, if it's not Apple, it probably wouldn't have made Slashdot.
Okay, I don't know about PDAs, but phones presumably have been used. "US Military Issues Phones to Soldiers" doesn't sound newsworthy, whether it's Nokia, Motorola or who else, but add an "i" in front of phone, and bingo...
(There's a trend of common stories made newsworthy by talking about the Iphone - remember that recent story of "You can access this website on an Iphone"?)
Note that the Iphone is barely mentioned in the story - I can see the Ipod being widely used is significant (although as you say, PDAs are nothing new), but it's a bit misleading to present the Iphone in the summary on an equal footing.
CHIC-CHING!!! $$ $$$ $$$$ $$$$$ With the right software, iPod Touches and iPhones could actually fly drone aircraft. Type 'FPV plane' into YouTube and enjoy the ride.
How many vietnam veteran does it take to change a lightbulb? you weren't there man, you wouldn't know...
Of Code And Men
http://www.tavoproducts.com/ They actually work quite well.
Heard this a few years back in a political discussion, and I must say I agree with it:
"I'm pro-bush, but not the George W kind."
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Not showing much signs of INTELligence, is he?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Larry Craig once thought his iPhone with Jailbreak v2.0 was enough to be free in MN ... too bad Larry wasn't aware that the "JailBreak MN" option was available until v2.0 SP1.
Obviously, Senators are now more in tune with their iPhone capabilities.
I have now been out longer than I was in (the Marines) but I can tell you that using COTS (Common Off The Shelf, or regular consumer-grade) gear is an idea whose time has come many times already. And yes, REI makes some nice stuff that may be better at one facet of the requirements but that nice stuff fails completely at satisfying other requirements.
For example, I have purchased several warm coats over the years, but none came with pockets big enough to carry a grenade much less an MRE, while every coat I was ever issued could do so. I wore the same "Field Jacket" for 10+ years and through numerous deployments, which included crawling under vehicles, carrying & installing & recovering (!) barbed wire a zillion times, etc, and the worst damage it suffered was a torn pocket. I wore my new REI jacket skiing and by the time I got home a seam had split and feathers were poking out through the very fabric.
As to recharging the Touch, as somebody who humped hundreds of pounds of spare batteries over the years, I say YAY! Today's military forces HAVE computers and power outlets, so finding a place to recharge isn't going to be the problem it might have been for Col. Hogan or Rambo.
Hmmm. Your ideas are intriguing to me and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
War by remote control !
Well, ok, maybe War by iRemote control.
Courtesy of Apple Computer.
If it has tires or tits, it will give you problems.
So let me get this straight, they can get cell coverage for an iPhone in the middle of the Iraqi desert, but I can't get decent AT&T coverage in Minnesota? Lame.
Finally, Apple has developed a profitable way of making mass murder fun!
Oh wait...
Innuendo gets peoples' attention, plain and simple, even if those people are over 13. :P
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
For what? so they can use internet and listen to music while they are at work? How lucky, it more sounds like a bonus gift to me, but not necessary.