Slashdot Mirror
Army Plots Its Smartphone Strategy
gManZboy writes "What kind of smartphone should a soldier have? Ahead of the impending expiration of two communications contracts, the Army's 5th Signal Command is prepping for the possibility of buying thousands of mobile devices. An RFI asks for BlackBerrys, 'emerging smartphones included but not limited to 4G devices such as Androids [and] iPhones,' tablet computers, and wireless broadband access devices. Also in the Army mobile vision: an apps marketplace."
How about encoded smoke signals?
Should soldiers carry homing beacons?
http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2011-05-27/
Blackberry - designed by untrustworthy Canadians
Android - based on Linux which was written by communists
iPhone - designed by Apple in California
Whatever they get, they need to have vastly increased battery life over the consumer versions.
Possibly a physical switch to turn off all transmissions as well (so it can be QUICKLY turned off).
And I always thought MS stood for unreliable...
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
And field replaceable batteries. So that you can bring extras and swap them YOURSELF.
Without the need for specialized tools.
There's an app for that!
They can be tracked complete with GPS and can be used to record sensitive information.
I have been reading Al Jazeera with the news of Libya last summer and cell phones were a problem. Basically loyalist spies would txt the GPS specs to Loyalists in Walid and Sirte, and whenever they went in the enemy was already there ambusing the rebels.
Even not I wonder how easy it is to hack them. China has a keen interest and have the best hacking elite group in the world that have inflitrated Los Almos and even satelites.
With Army equipment you know who made it and the ins and outs compared to a cell phone with knows what abilities it has obscured away.
http://saveie6.com/
Due to a design flaw, the Android root CA trust database cannot be changed without reflashing the phone in currently available versions of Android. Given the way the military handles their PKI, this makes existing Android devices infeasible. Android 4 is supposed to address this.
They already make the worlds toughest Laptops and tablets that make anything sold by Samsung, Apple, and Motorola look like a complete joke.
I want to see a smartphone that stop bullets and has a 240 hour battery life.
I don't think that 4 means what the United States Army apparently thinks it means...
They will need to a plan with out the roaming fees that can be as high as $20 meg.
There isn't a single phone on the market that runs "Android" - there are dozens of different models that each run some OS that is 99% android and 1% something else (if nothing else device drivers - the open source version of Android can't actually run on any production phone).
Apple is a bit different since they sell a phone, and not an operating system.
When the Army puts this out for bid it won't be to an OS vendor - it will be to a phone vendor (yes, I know Google owns Motorola). Whether or not Android 4 addresses this issue out of the box you can bet that vendors responding to the bid will factor in the need to address this feature if it is in the RFP.
When the Military standardizes it won't be on iOS or Android - it will be on Vendor A model B. I suspect that even if they picked Apple they wouldn't be buying the consumer product per se.
Not really unfeasible ... reflashing an Android phone really just requires selecting an image from an application and rebooting. It shouldn't be required, but it's a pretty trivial problem to resolve.
because they are not really smart "phones" but smart logging and user tracking devices with phone functionality built in
the app stores of android/iphone are plagued with secret phone home "apps" who transmit all sorts of juicy info back to their various networks, admob (nice name) mydas,2o7,mobclix and its ilk, stats and "analytics" aka spyware are rife all going on without "informed" consent from the customer, because if they really knew what their phone was doing they wouldnt be so complacent
just packet sniff an iphone/android phone install some "apps" and watch the requests fly.
and you want your military to be spied on by commercial companies for profit ? GPS location, wifi AP locations, gps tower locations, IMI numbers, GUIDs
all sent back to mothership, sounds like a juicy target to me
http://www.military.com/news/article/army-looks-to-smart-phone-for-nett-warrior.html
Any Android device selected would come with a customized image, preloaded with only the CAs the Army would want on there. At the quantity the Army would be purchasing these things in, this wouldn't require "rooting," as the vendor would likely include this service as part of the bid. This is a potential advantage for Android, since Apple refuses to customize iOS for any customer of any size.
or at best, DoD related bloat. The army already has numerous proprietary and secure communications technologies
that rely on field-tested technology already integrated well with existing systems. Considering the average warhawk's propensity to
wax prophetic on a war with china, its obligatory to also consider what would happen to these HTC, Samsung, and other devices regardless
of operating system once operated in a country with vastly more knowledge of the aformentioned cellular devices than our military.
but if the military is seen as no more than the strongarm by which capitalism is enforced across the globe, then so be it. The product must be consumed
and what better consumer than a well funded division of the government that is, by historical example alone, guaranteed to increase its spending each year
and arguably never fight a war in the sincere interest of protecting its citizens.
Good people go to bed earlier.
I don't know the exact details but it has. Very few people know for exactly what.
Every single attempt the Army has made to give its soldiers the same capabilities as a 13 year-old girl with an iPhone in 2007 has produced hilarious results. There was Future Force Warrior, Future Soldier, a dozen versions of Land Warrior, which were rolled into half a dozen versions of Nett Warrior. Nett Warrior -- the most recent attempt to waste gobs of taxpayer money -- is notable for producing this marvel of design elegance.
I give you, the Nett Warrior End User Device :
Believe it or not, that's the smallest, lightest, and most elegant system the Army has come up with yet. It's the first device to break with their tradition of attaching as many awkwardly shaped objects as possible to the soldier's head.
I can't wait to see how our brilliant and effective military contracting system interprets the smartphone.
It might just be me, but a touchscreen-only phone seems like it might be less than ideal for a soldier. I would think that actual buttons would be a better idea for people who might be wearing various types of hand gear in varied conditions.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Please learn what "per se" means.
kthxbai.
New droid razar is fast with omap4, got amoled screen, water proof, made kevlar strong, good encryption, and the webtop app would soilders trying to cut down on extra electronics.
It's good to know that while the rest of the world is literally starving, our military get a blank check to waste money on even more silly gadgets. Brilliant. Can we get these soldiers some more sports cars, too, while we're at it?
I don't respond to AC's.
Made in China
As a former soldier I can tell you this: there is no coherent strategy. This is almost certainly 80-90% fail.
For non-deployed soldier, there is no need for a government issued smartphone because, just like everyone else, soldiers own personal smartphones already.
Unless of course, the phone is used only for official business and the government doesn't trust your personally owned phone with it.
While you're deployed it's different, mainly in that your own phone probably won't work, since there are no cell towers around and/or the towers are incompatible.
So, for any of this to work at all, either the Army has make its signal units run their own movable cell basestations, or they need to buy phone service from the host country.
Also, the phones will be so stuffed with Army bloatware and locked down with security and overbuilt big and heavy for ruggedness that they will be essentially useless.
And then after purchasing them, the Army will try to keep using the same crap phones for a 5-10 year lifecycle while the rest of the phone world marches on with Moore's law.
And since the purchasing contract system makes things really expensive they will probably try to save money by only buying enough for the high-ranking officers and NCOs, and for the elite units, but none for the normal soldiers. And on the off chance that your unit does get enough to go around, your commander will keep them locked in a container to prevent loss, damage and theft, because they're too expensive to risk actually using them.
... there is only one choice: the Pip-Boy 3000! This is now a real thing, being developed by LG Display, Universal Display and L-3 Display Systems UDC, and tested in the field: http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2010-10/15/wrist-mounted-computers How cool is that?
Awesome. Fire Direction simplified through a DOD port of Angry Birds.
You could have the different ordinance represented by the Founding Fathers and just swap the pigs out with a pic of the terrorist du jour.
I'm just waiting for the first tank crash caused by a driver text-messaging.
"Where is that air strike?"
"Sorry, I was playing Angry Birds"
When the Military standardizes it won't be on iOS or Android - it will be on Vendor A model B. I suspect that even if they picked Apple they wouldn't be buying the consumer product per se.
Otherwise how else could they charge $10,000 a unit or something similar.
Well, so far, Android hasn't opened up its source code, so the DoD would have to explicitly ask them to provide it. I doubt iPhone, since the DoD might prefer their own walled garden, rather than Apple's. M$ is out of the question, since they may not want standard PC apps from anywhere infecting their phones. Blackberry - doubtful, since they may not want to experience an outage if RIM's servers go down.
Not really unfeasible ... reflashing an Android phone really just requires selecting an image from an application and rebooting. It shouldn't be required, but it's a pretty trivial problem to resolve.
Military uses user based certs. This means that every time a user throughout the entire DoD organization is fired/quits/change jobs/changes names/etc. They have their certificate revoked. This means they are probably revoking hundreds of certificates per day. Generally, you need to update your CRLs about once a week at a minimum, though they prefer that applications use OCSP, where a query is sent in real time to the CA to see if the cert has been revoked for this reason. So, flashing isn't a very reasonable thing to do once a week or more, especially when the product takes an hour to flash.
Are they our of their fool mind? Are the general idiots? Two words: Bradley Manning
A mil spec Android device rooted with a propriary rom created by the DoD would allow for flexibility, easy upgrade, and enhanced security..... Just think
Articles that reveal anything the Army or Navy or any other branch of the Military is doing especially in regards to their communications freely informs enemies of information they should not be privy to. If they are to find out, let them do it on their own, possibly revealing a trail back to them, and in this case to their communications network systems. Apparently, we are way past that being of concern now. Incredibly STUPID.
Apple made a nice adaptation for Lowe's store. It is about one inch thick and is married with a bar code scanner. It works very well...
In what way do you disagree with my usage of it? Most likely if they did pick Apple they'd get something close to the consumer model, but not quite the same. So, it is an "iPhone", but it really isn't, and that seems like an appropriate use of per se.
It might even be just an iPhone minus the EULA and warranty disclaimer paperwork in the box, but that still isn't quite the consumer model.
Per wikipedia a good synonym of "per se" is "without qualifications" - and I don't think they'll be using a consumer phone without qualifications.
What is the name of the big missile that targets the RF signal
from radar? So what keeps an RF signal seeking
missile or other device from causing problems.
A soldier should not have a smart phone or any other
radio linked phone while in the field. The RF signature of
a passive RF receiver IED trigger is so tiny...
Then there is the issue of cameras....
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.