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US Army Considers a Smartphone For Every Soldier
destinyland writes "The US Army is seriously considering the idea of issuing a smartphone to every soldier, and they're already modernizing one Texas brigade 'through a range of electronic devices that will include not just smartphones but tablet devices, e-reader and mini-projectors.' The company that developed Patriot missiles has already created several dedicated military apps for both iPhone and Android phones, including one that allows soldiers to track colleague's locations on the battlefield. Interestingly, the army is likely to use an off-the-shelf model, heightening the war between Apple and Android phones. Apple's non-replaceable batteries may become an issue in the field, since 'plugging the phone in to recharge isn't always a viable option in the middle of combat.'"
I gotta get back to ya later Mom - I'm kinda engaged right now.
with all the hooking up that is going to be happening now!! Enjoy!!! Enjoy!!! OOOOOO!
Didn't they just ban all portable mass storage devices as security risks? I mean what do they think these smart phones are?
I haven't seen much consumer electronics equipment that could survive a combat environment. Seems like just the sand alone in Iraq would mess up a lot of devices pretty quick.
And that's the thing -- it's all well and good to say that a certain piece of equipment will give soldiers some kind of advantage, but after a while the "advantage" becomes the norm. What happens then, when a piece of equipment that a soldier has come to rely upon just stops working? Do they carry on like before they had the equipment, or does what was once an advantage become a disadvantage, as the soldiers have to essentially retrain themselves on the fly?
Batteries, cracked screens, fouled-up input devices, software bugs... there's a reason why equipment designed for the military costs so much more than consumer equipment..
Breakfast served all day!
Upload to Wikileaks, is there an app for that?
We found Bin Laden, and he's an excellent dancer...
Rather than straight out "off the shelf" devices, wouldn't they be better served by something equivalent to a Panasonic Toughbook. Maybe that could be covered by 3rd party cases (with built-in batteries) but an iPhone is something that requires a bit of protection even for everyday use.
When they came for the communists, I said "He's next door. Take him away. Goddam commies."
They better get a GOOD DATA plan with free roaming or the fees will kill them.
where you can hit 11k for a few hours of web surfing in Canada and Canada rates are much lower then over places.
not on the main app store.
How many car and pedestrian accidents are caused by people texting while trying to do something else?
Do we really wanna see sexting incidents in the fox hole?
Why can't we let people believe whatever they like? It's not like a little religion has ever hurt anyone.
Should texting by fighter jet pilots be banned unconditionally, or only when operated by rookie pilots, at speeds in excess of Mach 1, etc.
I wonder how much other Chinese electronics it'll be a good idea to use on the battlefield.
User space apps by DARPA. Rootkit by the the PLA.
Why stop there? Lets get each of them a limo and a call girl too. Don't raise taxes to pay for our gold plated military though.
"Oi, , can you just stop shooting for a bit while I change the battery and reboot my phone?"
If im not mistaken motorola has/had a few phones that could stand drop and shock to some mil spec. If they could put a smartphone into that sort of shell durability would be less of an issue
I'd rather have a Smartsoldier for Every Phone
== With enough Will Power, one could move mountains. With enough Brains, one would just leave them where they are ==
You mean like this? "General Dynamics' GD300 is the Pip-Boy that runs Android"
http://www.engadget.com/2010/08/09/general-dynamics-gd300-is-the-pip-boy-that-runs-android/
'Droids for Droids'
My understanding is that they are already having trouble with the amount of batteries that need to be carted around by modern forces. Don't know what's been said in the US, but the Canadian Forces have been publicly saying they want some kind of common battery system for weight reasons alone. In short, are we sure that more electronics is actually a good idea at this point? At some point this stuff really does start impacting force mobility.
Pvt Smith just checked in to "That Big Crater in the middle of the town"
If your going to identify your location to the enemy, there must be cheaper options than a smart phone.
I could see using these things while not deployed, but I suspect that the coverage in Afghanistan will be a little poor. If they are talking about a souped up handset radio, it might work...
âoeAny society that would give up a little liberty to gain a little security will deserve neither and lose both.
So, you're going to put a comm device on every soldier that emits RF much of the time?
You better seed the whole place with decoy receiver transmitters or relay devices.
Else a military with any level of technical sophistication will use it to target and trigger munitions.
(I had a similar idea when I was in the Army still in the 80s. But it involved specifically putting out more decoys to act as relays than there were soldiers/real radios. Some of them moving, so that wouldn't be a way to decide which was real. Wasn't very practical at the time due to limits on the computing power available.)
I gotta get back to ya later Mom - I'm kinda engaged right now.
What if I told you me and 10+ other guys saw 'AFK: Real War' from an actual soldier in Afghanistan playing a war simulation at that time?
(not naming any names including game)
IFF, TL;DR
(IFF is now In Fire Fight :)
I am sure they would rather we weren't at war.
What is the cellphone reception like in the mountains of Afghanistan anyway?
My bet is on the Motorola i1
Only devices (which I know) which can be brought up to military security standards are:
Symbian
Windows CE (pre Win 7)
Android (with custom firmware)
Blackberry (of course with a very strict military server, nothing goes to Canada)
and obviously plain Linux.
I mean decent VPN support, authentication support, companies like Nokia who can build no camera devices, strict policies managed from a central location.
Of course Apple is capable of doing all of above and while comedies like app store exist, iPhone is a very advanced UNIX/NeXT device. Obviously Apple would never do it since they will not want to be involved with US Military that way.
I know Symbian very well and you can't believe how an evilly managed device (for user) you can create.
Yeah, sure, it sounds like a stupendous idea. Praise Allah.
increased security ...job one
GSM wasn't made for military communication, are they NUTS??
Hope I won't give anyone an heart attack by stating this fact but a lot of military software runs on Windows. It even includes some missiles.
Of course their quality standards could be way more higher than anyone down to the choice of languages (e.g. ADA).
conservatives should be all over cutting frivolous defense spending like this.
Some of the places they could fight probably are out of range (even if in range, could be a vulnerability, an infiltration mission could be badly screwed because someone called the wrong number, or would be bad of someones position could be triangulated). So or they use satellite signal, or they don't plan use it in the battlefield. Of course, are also good pocket computers with camera, gps and so on, so would love that them add i.e. some augumented reality apps to the current set for all.
Sounds all good until one falls into enemy hands.
The Motorola Defy is one hell of a beast and is the right smartphone for the military.
Android 2.1 (2.2 coming), IP67 rating (Sand/Dust-proof & Water Resistant), Scratch-Resistant glass, Drop resistant. Scores well in the quadrant benchmarks at 800MHz compared to other phones running at 1GHz with Android 2.2.
The screen is the same size as the iPhone, but the unit overall is smaller at the top and bottom and weighs less. The battery is removable.
The antenna design is also remarkable, one of the few phones (and the first Android phone) to be certified to be used in Rural Australia, on the very edge of coverage. A lot of users report that this phone holds calls in low coverage areas where other phones have failed.
If the Military is looking for an off-the-shelf phone to deploy, they can't go past this one. It ticks all the boxes to handle the environment, it is not too bulky like most ruggedised phones, the antenna performance in low-coverage areas is phenomenal, and it is running Android with all the features.
Android is also a better development platform for proprietary apps than iOS, as apps can be loaded without Market Approval, without having to register all of the iOS devices in the fleet as development phones or having to jailbreak.
Rather than straight out "off the shelf" devices, wouldn't they be better served by something equivalent to a Panasonic Toughbook. Maybe that could be covered by 3rd party cases (with built-in batteries) but an iPhone is something that requires a bit of protection even for everyday use.
Well the military guys choose 'laptops' (!) like these: :)
http://www.aselsan.com.tr/urun.asp?urun_id=89&lang=en
Funny is, it is considered to be 'light'.
BTW these things are sold to NATO members army high level personnel only. Don't try to buy like a friend did
While on it, it comes with Windows.
A military MD we know keeps buying these.
http://www.gsmarena.com/ericsson_r310s-200.php
Of course as Ericsson did some AOL thing with Sony, they don't produce anymore. You would be really surprised at some 'package not opened' prices for that old phone. So why he keeps buying? Even that monstrous phone can't stand to field conditions in peace time.
Hmmm I'd think they'd at least want something ruggedized like this one that already meets military specs. There's no way a stock iPhone or more 'droid phones would stand up to any kind of abused in the field.
I see this as an excellent opportunity for defence to be able to utilise the innovation of the small software vendor. Generally software supply contracts are won by big players. A platform like this enables small players to more easily get in the game as they can release apps tagged as defence apps, and the forces can see if they are useful or not. And yes, I haven't used American spelling in my post.
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
And here I am, considering dumping my smartphone for a good old fashioned dumbphone. Don't get me wrong, by HTC Hero is great as a web browser, a text messenger, a Wordfeud platform. If I want to see what time a movie is playing or what planets are visible in tonight's sky, the smartphone is awesome. But god help me if I want to make an actual phone call. If they thought repealing Don't Ask Don't Tell was going to be bad for military readiness...
--I'm so big, my sig has its own sig.
-- See?
This sounds a lot like the old PLRS/JTIDS hybrid (Position Location Reporting System/Joint Tactical Information Dissemination System) ideas that were being shown off around the US Army Signal Center in 1980 or so. It would have relayed back the location of each unit, and allowed messages to be sent back and forth.
GPS didn't exist yet, so you kept location with timing between the nodes of the network. It was text messages at that time. Very limited, but still the core of the idea.
When encryptable packet switched radio came to the fore, it was one possible way to implement this on a more advanced basis. You could also make sigint and traffic analysis very difficult by dropping cheap realys/decoys all over the place. It would have been robust, as you destroy one, you still have many many paths to get your message through. Fill up network with bogus traffic so that traffic levels wouldn't spike before an operation. Or, spike them in one area as a ruse and then do something in a different area.
I fear, though that the US is getting overly used to fighting forces that have limited technological abilities. They probably won't make the investment to do the decoying and traffic loading that would make this safe against a more advanced military.
... and homosexuals in the military ...
There are many others like it, but this one is mine. My iPhone is my best friend. It is my life. I must master it as I must master my life. Without me, my iPhone is useless. Without my iPhone, I am useless. I must text my iPhone true. I must text faster than my mother, who is trying to block me. I must text my friends before she grounds me. I will. Before God I swear this creed: my iPhone and myself are defenders of my social life, we are the masters of our parents, we are the saviors of my social life. So be it, until there is no enemy, but peace. Amen.
I didn't intend that to be that creepy when I started it, but I think that describes 90% of high school and college students I've interacted with.
"including one that allows soldiers to track colleague's locations on the battlefield."
Now, lets say I am a soldier that has just been killed. My device does not know this, but the opposing force does. They pickup my phone, start running through a list of who is on the battlefield, and designate where their snipers need to aim.
Alternatively, opposing force finds device, and now appears on the location system as the soldier. This could be a bit of an issue if they send a message via it for everyone to regroup... or medical evac. I can imagine a well booby trapped body for that.
My point being: convenience is very nice, but deactivating it on death is vital. This is not something you'll get off-the-shelf, but can be as simple as a plugin heart monitor with password reset in the event of no pulse.
Android with custom hardened OS hands down, Apple has never impressed me with security and they've run off of "macs don't get viruses" for too long (although they never officially state this it is a common misconception).
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
Recent security leak concerns aside, it also seems like "stock" models (possibly "custom" ones, too?) carried by each and every soldier would be akin to painting bullseyes on the soldiers' chests, whether alone, or worse yet in a group. Think of all the data and subsequent inferences we've all read about here in the past couple years regarding all sorts of "social networking"/communication hardware. While I can agree that these devices could be really useful, particularly with regard to efficiency of communications between soldiers, the data travels in space accessible to all. I'd think a smart and resourceful enemy could probably draw some useful conclusions just by studying traffic patterns, etc. Maybe we really are becoming "Team America" (FUCK YEAH!" - seems like the kind of well-intentioned disaster-waiting-to-happen that Gary and company always managed to be involved in....
Cool. Then it automatically alerts me when it moves. Nice. :)
If you need more than one battery on an iPhone, you add a second, external battery, typically built into a case, and that battery is of course, replaceable, you can carry 10 if you like. iPhone also has about double the battery life of any Android phone right out of the box, so if we're talking batteries, Android is at a distinct disadvantage.
The US military already owns the largest collection of iPod touch in the world. The fact that it requires almost no training and maintenance is a key feature. Powerful native C apps that are very easy to develop is another key feature.
Seems like more and more well-intentioned ideas are very likely providing the foundation for unforeseen disasters that would be funny if our side wasn't the recipient....
From the sub-article:
---snip---
Not everything is strictly for students. The “Fort Gordon Post Locator” marries a post map to the capabilities of Google maps, letting users search for buildings by name and number, find themselves with GPS and generate directions to their destination. Motes said he can adapt the app for other posts, too.
“Some of these places are on Yahoo Local, but where’s the [Central Issue Facility]? You’re not going to find that on Yahoo,” Motes said. “If you’re told to go to Building 25801, this will show you Connecting Soldiers to Digital Applications World Headquarters.”
---snip---
Even if their data is encrypted, it's always impressive what inferences smart and resourceful people can make based simply upon data traffic/statistics/demographics. Then again, if the devices do contain "unreliable" or "malicious" electronics from China, et. al., then maybe not only the data sent will be wrong, but so will the inferences.
Will the soldiers also recieve a free T-shirt with a bullseye silkscreened on it with each phone?
They should give the diplomats and foreign intelligence also these devices and change the name to youtubeleaks. Than we at least have some nice footage to see the gory details of what is done in the name of the US citizen..
WAIT A MINUTE. Are we talking about the same Patriot missiles that barely managed to muster 40% success rate in Israel during the first(of many) gulf war? And these nice folks are making apps for soldiers that may using them to make critical decisions that may affect the lives of our soldiers? Obviously some people in our military have not read their history books.
"We are just a war away from Amerikastan. When god vs god the undoing of man." Dave Mustaine
I'll bet it won't have a camera!
US Government props up flailing economy with increased defence spending on consumer grade products.
Dad can I get an Iphone?
Tomorrow after we attack the americans I bring you one.
Thanks dad, can I go too?
Your enemy wants to 'friend' you... accept/decline?
So each solider is getting a TI calculator (complete with square root key) ?
Have you fscked your local propeller head today?
Seriously, these need to be made in a none Chinese nation, IDEALLY, in America. This would offer a company like Motorola an opportunity to bring back manufacturing and then apply it to sales in America as well.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
The Gulf War is ancient history, and the Patriot missiles and tracking systems have had a couple decades to mature.
To give an idea of the timeline, someone who enlisted during Desert Shield could be retired by now.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
That is exactly why whoever wins the contract NEEDS to bring back the manufacturing to America. Considering that Apple has not done manufacturing in decades and never on this scale, then it would make sense for Motorola win.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
when real warfare becomes a networked virtual RPG, played on tablet computers by the soldiers of warring factions. the loser has to buy pizza....
Republican leadership = Idiocracy
Link
Now just buy a bunch of those link cables and code a few apps on those and you're good to go.
Okay seriously I've just run out of pointless things to say.
After all, it's the most widely-used smartphone in the Federal government because of it's solid security. Oh and the battery is easily replaced as well.
I haven't seen much consumer electronics equipment that could survive a combat environment. Seems like just the sand alone in Iraq would mess up a lot of devices pretty quick.
My iPhone survives water, sand, etc when I am out hiking in wilderness areas. I use a ziplock bag. I recommend the freezer bags over the sandwich bags, the freezer bags are a bit more durable.
Somehow i can't see 'air strike' and 'scud missile' making it past the app store approval.
Cellphones can be tracked. That means enemies/terrorists can "follow" your patrols around and map their routes, then set up ambushes. This is a show stopper for phones. Secondly civilian phones are insecure, so someone could hack in and listen to mission briefs. That would be bad. Third any soldier could upload classified data to their phone then send it to wikileaks, again that's bad. Forth: classified systems must always be air gapped from unsecured civilian networks. The cellphone network isn't. If you give someone a cellphone you should expect them to use it for their work. And their work is likely classified.
Seems to me this is excellent news! The army has taken it's first baby step up from das kiloflops! Yes, hello, I would like to buy a tablet that could last me 20 years, scratches, drops, moisture and all. iPhones are 100% inappropriate for any combat situation, except perhaps a social quibble... If you drop it face down, you're F*****. How about something with full body gesture recognition and innovative display technology... like haptic feedback built into clothing! Or, or, or, Innovative peer to peer secure ad-hoc networks? Innovative use of the radio spectrum? Innovative heads up displays that use amazingly simple and brilliant cues? Color (Green -> Teal -> Blue -> Purple -> Red) or saturation values to indicate remaining bullets or other ammo? I mean those suggestions aren't even really innovative, but an app to "track your buddies" sounds like they didn't even write the code! Sounds like they just copied it and pasted it, generated some "US ARMY" .svg's and tacked them up on the interface! How about; right hand vibrates if there are combatants to the right? Bullet directional origin indicators? S*** guys! You can do better than 2 iphone apps whatever your slice of the $692,000,000,000 pie is. Jesus. It's days away from 2011 (and my birthday! eeeeeh, eeeeeeeh?), not 2005 when we thought it was cool to look to be able to stalk our friends on google maps. Grow up and get a life, stop wasting geek money. Jerks.
US Army considers giving peace a chance.
Apple's non-replaceable batteries may become an issue in the field, since 'plugging the phone in to recharge isn't always a viable option in the middle of combat.'"
No, but a battery pack in a rugged case is.
Meanwhile having to extract a device from a ruggedized case and also having a device that allows sand and dust to get more easily inside, could well be seen as a negative too.
Sliding keyboard? Right the hell out.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Oh my god... this is perfect. Just please, PLEASE make sure these things have high definition cameras, 32 gig microSD cards, and out-of-box 4G connectivity to tor and i2p.
After all, our troops deserve the very best.
So it seems just about none of the commenter's here are or have been in the military. There's a lot of questions flying about that are common knowledge to soldiers. :)
Regarding the ban on portable mass storage devices. Yes, most forms of portable media devices are blocked from out networks. Someone said that there are many ways to connect the phone(USB, etc). Most of these are blocked on our networked computers. The rest aren't available on our machines.
PCM2 stated he hasn't seen much consumer equipment that could withstand a deployment. That's not true at all. Just about every soldier deploys with a personal laptop, digital camera, mp3 player, portable game device, etc. Hell, majority of us have our 360's and PS3's with us. Now, not all of those make it to the battlefield, but the cameras and mp3 players do. You say it could become a disadvantage if the equipment broke. So we should never give ourselves the advantage in the first place? We have many useful technologies on the battlefield. One main one to point out is a Battlefield Tracking system to locate other units/convoys/important events(IED's, fire fights, etc). We use this very heavily to conduct convoy missions. I've been on 3 deployments and never once needed a map because ours has always worked. This doesn't mean we have ever stopped doing map reading training.
Someone also suggested Toughbooks. We have and use them quite often.
ATestR, you say coverage would be bad in Afghanistan. Not exactly. There's a lot of ways we could get around that. Large amount of deployed soldiers have work phones already over here.
And most important of all is zach the lizards comment. The original Game Boy is obviously the only consumer device made with battlefield environments in mind
Not really smart. For something this important they need a completely open source stack, firmware, drivers, OS, applications and it needs to be compiled with an open source compiler that has compiled itself twice over and found no inconsistencies. Services must be bound to military servers only. So possibly only MeeGo qualifies. If the enemy cracked a third party's servers, there'd be a problem.
Just thought I'd point out something not so obvious.
Wouldn't they be better off considering a smartsoldier for every phone?
Really, give the soliders in the battlefield a device that can: Take pictures (complete with gps location!), have a gps. have ways of sharing data.
Yes, We don't need some lone solider to turn info into wikileaks, we'll just use facebook.
Be seeing you...
This sounds like the Army@Love comic series that satirizes the Iraq war. Soldiers are issued mobile phones to use in combat because of 'motivation and morale', and one of them coins the term 'joining the Hot Zone club' - which is doing the nasty while under enemy fire.
"..One hosts to look them up, one DNS to find them, and in the darkness BIND them."
So, have they actually hit anything yet?
If nothing else that company has a reputation for shipping an unfinished and unreliable product into a war zone where people are depending upon it for their lives. That's not something they can live down in a hurry.
Compare that to the magic space laser the Israelis have that can apparently shoot down artillery shells. It's got put through more testing to apparently iron out the bugs instead of being rushed out and trusted to shoot down 40 year old Iranian surplus rockets fired by the untrained.
... apps for both iPhone and Android phones, including one that allows soldiers to track colleague's locations on the battlefield.
And how long before somebody on the other side finds a way to use that to track the where all their enemies are? Wouldn't that be useful information for them? In fact, they don't need much more than a list of telephone numbers for the people they want to track - and the persons won't even need to be talking, since their mobile will be doing that for them at regular intervals in order to stay connected to the network. I'm not sure this is a clever idea.
In the future, instead of hacking phone numbers, I guess people will shoot the patriot missiles. I'm not sure the military should be on a civilian OS.
"...allows soldiers to track colleague's locations on the battlefield"
What could possibly go wrong?
giPhone? Mandroid?
Bringing a whole new meaning to "killer app."
I think they should be dealing with angry kurds instead of Angry Birds.
But it never went further than the first (successful) trial:
http://myapplenewton.blogspot.com/2009/05/apple-newton-in-combat.html
http://homepage.mac.com/matthewboulanger/NewtonandGPS.html
William
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Que Deus te de em dobro o que me desejas
[May God give you double that which you wish for me]
Eventually, war will come down to soldiers from both sides playing Modern Warfare (Call of Duty, BlackOps, etc.) against each other. The loosing team will be required to exterminate X% of their team/society, just like that Star Trek episode many years ago. Conventional warfare is just becoming too expensive and too damaging to the environment.
>including one that allows soldiers to track colleague's locations on the battlefield
Yes, let a phone that is know to have weaknesses be able to track movement of all armed forces when in a country that has no problems what so ever to hack into networks and such, and give them an easy way to eliminate all those troops all at once....come on....are you serious???
Didn't an official review after the Gulf War determine that not a single Iraqi missile was downed by the Patriot? Shouldn't we assume that this is a similar boondoggle?
die_infidel (die_infidel@gmail.com) wants to share their location with you on Google Latitude. You too can see where your friends are and share your location using Latitude from your phone, computer, or both.
Get started with Latitude
Go to https://www.google.com/latitude from your phone or computer.
See the sharing request
Open Latitude and select the notification in your friends list.
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I've lost all my marbles except one & It's fun to test angular & centripetal acceleration in my skull
Not sure where the 40% success rate mentioned in a previous post came from, but even taking that as a given, the troops were doing a hell of a lot better at 40% of the enemy missiles getting stopped than 0%!
You really need to look at these things with some perspective. War is an inexact science at best - no one can wait for perfection, or often even wait for halfway-decent.
Next thing they'll be issuing; mittens with strings! They won't get lost when you take them off. How cool is that?
That 40% has been questioned and pushed down to close to 0% by some miltary and academic investigations. Only the salesmen were talking about 40%. With a fairly dramatic and stupid early bug they were initially no more effective than a stone to repel tigers, after that was fixed reports are mixed as to whether they were effective or a distraction that led to troops wasting time better spent elsewhere.
Let's try a large scale example to outline the point. One thing worth keeping in mind about deploying experimental technology in war is if the vast resources Germany committed to the V2 (where more slaves died building them than the weapons actually killed) where committed elsewhere a lot more people would have died in WWII.
It's not about "perfection", it's about whether there is any improvement at all. In the initial stages it was not and it's debatable if they made a difference after they were improved paticularly since some data appeared to be very unreliable to the point of possible fraud.
Tatoos that show all the best ways to infiltrate our military. All you need is one dopey "gomer pile" jailbreaking and installing a bad app that sends all communications with the device to terrorists.
i think smoke signals are much harder to hack really, they can also stand an emp shockwave (dont gimme a scientific rant about something moving air and extinguishing fire here pls) and can be improvised macgyverstyle from whatever is at hand
beware he who denies you access to information for in his mind, he already deems himself to be your master (SMAC-ish)