Armed forces to embrace smartphone and tablet devices for the battlefields
Armies around the world have for long times been one of the main developers and users of technology. Whenever a new weapon or technology arrived, every military had to embrace the same technology in order not to stay behind their enemies, or at least potential enemies. So now it seems that US military is seriously thinking about using mobile computing platforms including tablets and smartphones from different producers for their purposes. Not surprisingly, among device tested have been iPhones and iPad tablets, but also Android powered devices and Microsoft Phone 7 smarpthones.
Obviously it is much cheaper for the Army to embrace and make use of commercially available technology than to develop its own devices. We also recently wrote about Singaporean military equipping their new armed forces recruits with iPads. What will those device be used for? There are different potential uses for iPhones or Android devices. For example this technology could provide soldiers with text messaging and multimedia messaging services which is a mature technology and tested in many conditions in civil use around the word. Smartphones could be used for real time communications and navigation in difficult conditions.
So far iPhone and Android devices have been deemed most appropriate. One of the issues when testing iPhone in difficult conditions was that iphone’s couldn’t be used in deserts because of lack of AT&T services. Perhaps Army could jailbreak and unlock their devices? Anyway if these tests prove that smartphone and tablets could be useful, and sincerely we are sure they will be, there will soon be some Army units equipped with iPhones or Android phones and tablets.
One of the problems in this area is the lack of sophisticated encryption for secure communications links. Could there be an app for this soon?
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