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."

Comments

iPhones win by default

[Anonymous Coward]

Blackberry - designed by untrustworthy Canadians
Android - based on Linux which was written by communists
iPhone - designed by Apple in California

Re:iPhones win by default

[Jimme Blue]

Blackberry - designed by untrustworthy Canadians
Android - based on Linux which was written by communists
iPhone - designed by Apple in California

I think by this logic it's going to have to go to Microsoft (unfortunately):
  - Blackberry => Canadians => socialists => communists
  - Android => Linux => communists
  - iPhone => Apple => California => communists

  - LatestMicrosoftPhoneSoftware => Microsoft => Washington => Confused With Washington, DC => Pentagon => DoD => Command Driven Economy => Shit.......Never mind.

iPhones win by default!

Re:iPhones win by default

[a.phoenicis]

Clearly, you don't know much about the iOS Dev environment. Under Apple's current development terms, organizations can already set up and deploy to their own privately managed App Distribution systems for their own privately signed devices. This would be no different.

Re:iPhones win by default

[GauteL]

Also Apple is very unlikely to agree to make custom military units with whatever requirements the military has. It's just not their thing.

They'll be better served customising Android and should have no trouble finding a hardware vendor.

As a side note, knowing the military the requirements will be decided by committee, resulting in something in that weighs 5 pounds to satisfy all the criteria.

Re:iPhones win by default

[Macrat]

Also Apple is very unlikely to agree to make custom military units with whatever requirements the military has. It's just not their thing.

Apple already makes custom builds of laptops without cameras per 3 letter agency security requirements.

Re:iPhones win by default

[TheRaven64]

Clearly he doesn't know much about the DoD or Apple either. This kind of conversation usually goes something like this:

DoD: Hello, we have a basically unlimited pile of money.
Apple: Hmm. Money, you say? We collect that stuff, can we have some?
DoD: We'd like a hundred thousand iPhones, a signing key that allows us to deploy any software onto them, and the source code for review.
Apple: Yes, yes, whatever. How much money were we talking about?
DoD: A really big pile.
Apple: Will a signature in blood be okay? We have some new interns...

Vastly increased battery life required

[DarkFencer]

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).

Re:Vastly increased battery life required

[mjwx]

On the contrary, the technology that the ordinary troops use is dated, heavy and expensive.

And meets the very specific requirements of the military.

The army wont be taking this stuff around suburbia in big aircon'd SUV's. They'll be taking it to the worst places on earth, 45 C heat, minus 20 C cold, mud, torrential rain, sandstorms and that's on a good day. The equipment will need to survive being dropped, thrown, sat on, fell on and manhandled by an organisation who doesn't have the word subtlety in it's vocabulary.

Above this, it needs to work, first time, every time after being dropped in the mud, blasted by sand, trod on and thrown. This is why a simple GPS unit weights 3 KG. Also it needs to be deadly accurate, the Garmin units just aren't that accurate, They rely on a lot of guesswork to plot your position and their sample rate is crap compared to a professional Trimble GPS unit. An expensive Magellan unit off the shelf costs $500 and has an inaccuracy of 3-5 metres, a Trimble GeoXH or GeoXT has an inaccuracy of 10-50 CM but they start at $3000 each (start at, they go past $7500). Trimble's are what we use for professional field work, where we need to record it down to the nearest metre or more.

Consumer units are neither rugged enough, nor accurate enough for military, hell, most wont survive a day with a geologist, let alone a marine.

Re:Newfangled gadgets

[hedwards]

Not if they lock it to approved apps and court martial anybody that's caught sideloading. I'm guessing the bigger problem is going to be the apps that are approved themselves.

None

[Billly Gates]

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.

Re:A mil spec N950

[Anonymous Coward]

Definitely. Nokia definitely cares about construction and build quality. They subject their phones to rigorous abuse. There's a youtube video somewhere of their quality testing. squished on a press repeatedly, dropped repeatedly.

I searched for the official Nokia Labs one from a year ago but couldn't find it.. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HicdXV_47V8

  Giz (sorry!) also has a story about it. http://gizmodo.com/5094602/a-look-at-the-nokia-damage-test-labs

An n950 is already the pocket equivalent of a Panasonic ToughBook. They may not be running quadcores and have the most beautiful screens ( or whatever the spec nerd are going crazy for this week) but a Nokia is guaranteed to be built like a tank.

Contrast that to a flimsy samsung/motorola android or an iphone that is absolutely destroyed when it gets dropped onto some rocks. It should be no question if you're looking only at durability in a mass produced consumer smartphone.

None of that matters though. The decision on what the military uses will always be decided on what state the money will go to, or what lobby payed the most for someone's campaign. So, it will probably be something from AT&T. probably an iphone with a frickin' bumper.

Can't wait to see how they screw this up!

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Touchscreen?

[damn_registrars]

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.