Army Develops Android-Based Framework For Battlefield Ops

gabbo529 writes "The United States Army is developing an Android-based smartphone framework and suite of applications for tactical operations. With the marriage between technology and military continuing to strengthen, more soldiers are getting phones for on-the-field operations. Already, the military has developed the Joint Battle Command-Platform, or JBC-P Handheld, which has an app that can be used to mark warning signals to future soldiers."

Comments

Question

[rlp]

Question for those who know about such things - wouldn't the RF emissions from a phone of the battlefield give away information about troop locations and deployment?

App usage while out on patrol

[Tanlis]

While out in the field with the Android phone and the new apps...

Sergeant: Private! Check to see if any other patrols have left any warning signals near here.

Private: Ok Sarge!

5 minutes later...

Sergeant: Private! What's taking so long? Are there any damn warnings?!?!

Private: Ohh! Sorry Sarge. I had to wait for the ad for Angry Birds Rio to finish loading and then I decided to download to it.

Sergeant: Gomer!!!

so...

[Charliemopps]

So Google will be tracking all of our military assets as well as our citizens? Awesome.

Re:OSS - Bad Idea

[DrgnDancer]

There's no GPL issue. The military simple doesn't release the software. The GPL allows organizations to keep their source code private as long as they don't try to redistribute the software. What the military does is the functional equivalent of Google making proprietary kernel mods for their internal version of Linux, except the "organization" happens to have a few million employees. Sometimes they do release military software to the public, but in that case if the compiled binary isn't classified, the source has to have been scrubbed for classified information before compilation. So releasing source wouldn't be an issue anyway.