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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.
I doubt that US law prohibits the military from developing missiles.
Do you understand the concept of 'disposable'? There won't be classified information on these things (that's on the network). When they break, you toss 'em. I don't have a link at the moment, but military personnel have been using consumer GPS units since the war broke out.
A mil spec iPod would be too heavy to move without a Humvee and too expensive to give to anyone under the rank of Captain.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
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
Yes, I was being a tad sarcastic - but you don't even need to re engineer the thing. Just put it in a nice holster / protector and you are most of the way there. And like I said, they can be pretty much disposable.
If this works out, then somebody can build a mil spec iPod from scratch, but as a demonstration of concept, I don't see anything wrong with it. 10 million teenagers can't be too far wrong...
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
sounds like the average military/government spec to me.
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
This. We brought over more personal electronics gear than most people who haven't seen would believe. AND there's PXs on most of the bigger posts that will sell you more. AND Amazon.com ships to APOs (yes we could get to Amazon.com, don't be silly). We brought back more personal electronics gear than we brought over by probably at least an order of magnitude :-). The vast majority of it survived just fine. One guy blew out his X-Box plugging it into the wrong power, and digital camera screens got kinda scratched up from the dust, but in general, consumer spec gear did just fine (iPhones and iPod Touches having glass screens would be a big advantage there. Much harder to scratch).
Now computers... those didn't survive as well. Personal game systems tended to stay in peoples relatively well sealed quarters, so they were mostly fine, but the grit really got into to anything that got taken outside much. Moving parts like hard drives, fans, and CD-ROMs failed a lot on our non-ruggedized laptops. The iPhone/Pods are fairly well sealed, all solid state, and like I said, have glass screens. Get a little plug to put into the ear phone holes and I think they'd have quite a reasonable failure rate.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Why is this modded funny?
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.
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!