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Android Goes To the Battlefield

Posted by Soulskill on from the not-the-terminator-kind dept.

wiseandroid writes "Google's mobile operating system Android has won plenty of adherents among cellphone makers and gadget manufacturers since its 2007 debut. Now defense contractor Raytheon is preparing it for a more urgent mission: saving lives in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan. Using Android software tools, Raytheon engineers have built a basic application for military personnel that combines maps with a buddy list. Raytheon calls the entire framework the Raytheon Android Tactical System, or RATS for short. Mark Bigham, a vice president of business development in Raytheon's Intelligence and Information Systems unit, says the company selected Android because its open source nature made developing applications easy."

13 of 128 comments (clear)

  1. Saving lives?? by raju1kabir · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Why do breathless writers always say "saving lives" when they refer to military applications? They're about taking lives. Just taking different ones.

    --
    "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
    1. Re:Saving lives?? by MobileTatsu-NJG · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Why do breathless writers always say "saving lives" when they refer to military applications? They're about taking lives. Just taking different ones.

      The lives they're saving are on our side. Also, this article isn't talking about Android being used as a weapon.

      --

      "I like to lick butts!" by MobileTatsu-NJG (#32700246) (Score:5, Informative)

    2. Re:Saving lives?? by LordAndrewSama · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's more patriotic. people like feeling good about themselves, and "Killing foreigners" isn't as patriotic of soldiers as "saving lives".

    3. Re:Saving lives?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Don't forget the "fight for freedom" which means ours and not theirs.

    4. Re:Saving lives?? by Philip+K+Dickhead · · Score: 1, Insightful

      The lives they're saving are on our side.
      Our "side"? Imperial stormtroopers
      Their "side"? Mothers, children and helpless villagers, "inconveniently located" on top of something we want to steal.

      --
      "Speaking the Truth in times of universal deceit is a revolutionary act." -- George Orwell
    5. Re:Saving lives?? by ClosedSource · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The fact that you consider CNN "Pravda" is disconcerting. I suspect there's a bit of indoctrination going on in the Army. How many of those who enlist had actually heard of Pravda until they joined the military?

      Besides, CNN was quite the cheerleader when the Iraq war started and didn't do their job of keeping the government honest.

      Of course, the sacrifices that men and women like you made are real and we appreciate it. We just hate to see your valor wasted on an unnecessary war.

    6. Re:Saving lives?? by Nathrael · · Score: 1, Insightful

      The difference here is that people are afraid of terrorist groups however and not their government. I'm quite sure that the new Iraqi government won't feed you feet-first into an industrial grinder for saying that you think the current head of state is full of shit. Yes, there is a huge terrorist problem in Iraq now, maybe larger than Saddam's state terrorism, true, but it's outlaws doing it and not a "lawful" government.

      --
      A good education is a bit like a STD - it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and gives you a desire to spread it.
    7. Re:Saving lives?? by raju1kabir · · Score: 3, Insightful

      This is a fascinating distinction for people halfway around the planet to debate about in online forums.

      For the people in Iraq who just want to live their lives in peace, it's not really that salient on a day-to-day basis. What matters to them is that their existence is orders of magnitude more perilous post-invasion than it was in the Saddam days.

      --
      "Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." -- GBS
    8. Re:Saving lives?? by Runaway1956 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      "The fact that you consider CNN "Pravda" is disconcerting. I suspect there's a bit of indoctrination going on in the Army."

      Old Navy here. Naturally, I can't speak for the Army - but we had our own opinions of the newspapers. They seldom reported anything the way it was. When we made the papers, each paper put it's own spin on things, sometimes to the point that the story was simply untrue. Left leaning newspapers generally try to make us look bad, right leaning newspapers try to make us all look like heros. The fact is, we were just doing our jobs, and sometimes the job was dangerous and unpleasant. The single time we made the news, when all the papers got things near right, was the reporting on Beirut City, 1978. Everyone agreed that things were confused, and that statement was more accurate than any other statement ever made about any of our missions.

      No "indoctrination" is needed if some grunt tells us that he calls a liberal paper the Pravda. He sees what is happening with his own eyes, and the paper reports something different - he needs no help drawing his own conclusions.

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
    9. Re:Saving lives?? by Runaway1956 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I'm most certainly not a liberal or a neocon - but you've sampled the Koo-Aid. The fact is, life in Iraq was much more stable under Saddam than it is today. Immeasurably more stable. You really should find some articles about the bookstores in Iraq. What happened to them epitomizes what has happened throughout Iraq.

      Yeah, Saddam was an evil sumbitch, and he deserved to die, but he was a stabilizing force, no matter how much we disliked him. IMHO, pure arrogance on the part of a neocon president forced the military to invade Iraq.

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
    10. Re:Saving lives?? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Ahem. As one of those "Imperial stormtroopers", I'd ask you if you've ever deployed overseas to see what really happens over there. In the Army we call CNN "Pravda". Because their reporting has the same relationship to the truth that the old USSR paper did. I deployed to Iraq for a year. I didn't kill anybody, and our unit helped to build schools and hospitals.

      Good for you!

      That is indeed the way to win the peace, and I'm happy to hear about it. Thanks.

      Nevertheless, the fact is, the Army actually does kill people, you know.

  2. Re:Can GPL'd software contributors block this? by Hope+Thelps · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Is there any way for contributors to the free software movement to block use of their software by military contractors?

    That would be contrary to the goals of the GPL, which aims to grant freedom to use the software for any purpose and to modify it to achieve those purposes. You'd need to use a different license to achieve your aims.

    --
    To summarise the summary of the summary: people are a problem. ~ h2g2
  3. Re:Linux? by earlymon · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Did Raytheon miss the announcement that linux is open source too?

    You know, it's entirely possible that they did. You should email them this link right away!

    http://developer.android.com/guide/basics/what-is-android.html

    --
    Pathological kinda promises Path + Logical - but instead, you get stuck with pathetic.