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

[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.

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.