US Army wants to equip all soldiers with an Apple iPhone or Android phone | Hacker News Reader

US Army wants to equip all soldiers with an Apple iPhone or Android phone

appleinsider.com

21 pointsevo_933 comments

Good idea. Wrong target. What we really need to do is equip all non-combatants with smart phones and provide them with free service. Secularize them overnight and end the war.

Make 'em come with Angry Birds and hire a few hundred programmers to put out new levels every day and you'd be set.

I always liked the idea of carpet-bombing the Middle East with porn magazines.

The linked article (http://www.armytimes.com/news/2010/12/army-smart-phones-for-...) is a great read, Well researched, well written, and chock-full of information.

It's also a pleasure to see the level of 'thinking through' that's being reported (for e.g. they're even considering setting up their own equivalent of the App Store!)

I'd imagine that in the field you'd be wearing gloves a lot. That might be problematic with most touch screens.

That's a solved problem, it just requires the fingertips of gloves to have some conductive material.

It's mighty cold in Chicago right now and my girlfriend noticed recently for the first time that her brand new Android phone's touchscreen doesn't work while wearing gloves... Is there a potential market for this or is someone already doing it?

Edit: Found one http://www.gloves-online.com/proddetail.php?prod=FH-1120B

And a DIY guide: http://www.instructables.com/id/Making-A-Glove-Work-With-A-T...

You can also use sausage, which I always find amusing:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qv02XeCMQFs

Doesn't the Army have the ability to make its own, more pertinent, more secure mobile device for the troops? I figure some of the strengths of Android iOS on the consumer side may wind up being weaknesses or just plan extraneous on the defense military side.. (security, why would you need to install "apps", etc).

Also, I thought those kinds of devices needed more verified software than is available on consumer-grade devices. I'm not sure about that one, though.

EDIT: Maybe it would make some sense if they forked Android and used it for their own in house purposes.

Doesn't the Army have the ability to make its own, more pertinent, more secure mobile device for the troops?

Which would then be so expensive that most soldiers would not be issued them and thus would buy civilian devices with their own money.

Maybe my edit went in too late. It really could be a modded platform, which isn't THAT much more expensive. Figure in cost of tweaking the software and providing infrastructure along with installing custom software on the phone and you've got something that at most probably wouldn't be much more than twice as expensive as a normal smartphone. Exclude infrastructure costs that would probably be there whether you used civilian stock phones or not.

I don't see how what you said fully relates. If the soldiers bought their own devices, they wouldn't get to put secret information on them...which was the point I was trying to make. I should have emphasized "more secure" more than I did.

The soldiers can freely buy whatever phone they want for their own private use. Why should the taxpayer be buying personal smartphones, anyway?

My impression is that anything mil-spec becomes really expensive, but I could be wrong. I was also making an analogy to soldiers buying their own gear when the military won't buy it for them, which AFAIK is happening in Iraq.

"Doesn't the Army have the ability to make its own, more pertinent, more secure mobile device for the troops?"

There's only half a million active-duty soldiers in the Army, compared to tens of millions of iPhone/Android customers. At that scale, adapting existing products may be cheaper.

I wonder what they would do to ensure a network would be available in remote or combat situations. Perhaps the investment in technology and research would benefit the private sector as well.

They mention that in the linked article. They have balloons that can provide cellular service in a 40 mile radius. Also, places like Afghanistan actually have workable cellular service.

Yes, just the job to help them clamp down on leaks. :)

Not going to happen. The administration at West Point wanted to give every student a cell phone back in 2007 but that never happened. Do you know how hard it is for the military to accept new technology? We are still using Vista!

Careful. Vista is new technology. Sure, it's not the latest and the greatest, but I'd honestly be shocked if an OS only 13 months old was adopted en masse by the US Military.

True. I have been hearing rumors of a Windows 7 upgrade next year. The rumor was initially November but that didn't happen.

The U.S. Army has been using iPod touch and iPhone in the field for the last two years.

"Software developers and the U.S. Department of Defense are developing military software for iPods that enables soldiers to display aerial video from drones and have teleconferences with intelligence agents halfway across the globe. Snipers in Iraq and Afghanistan now use a "ballistics calculator" called BulletFlight, made by the Florida firm Knight's Armament for the iPod Touch and iPhone. Army researchers are developing applications to turn an iPod into a remote control for a bomb-disposal robot (tilting the iPod steers the robot). In Sudan, American military observers are using iPods to learn the appropriate etiquette for interacting with tribal leaders. Translation is another important area. A new program, Vcommunicator, is now being issued to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan."

http://www.businessinsider.com/us-armys-newest-weapon-the-ip...

http://gizmodo.com/5119027/us-army-uses-ipod-touch-for-trans...

I expect this to fizzle. Back in 2002 (and a little bit on either side), the Navy was issuing brand-new Palm Pilots (yes, they were still "Palm Pilots" back then) to every newly commissioned ensign. The original plan was that, as the PDAs became obsolete every few years, the officers would turn them in for upgrades. Nobody ever really used them and it became obvious that the whole program was a huge waste of money so they just stopped issuing them.

True. They issued Palm-Pilots at West Point as well. They were hardly used and often lost.

Wow. I totally used the hell out of my Palm Pilot when I was in the Army. It was great for keeping track of all the minutiae you have to know about every one of your soldiers (as a squad leader). Totally replaced my zip up nylon filo-fax, and I always knew when Private Snuffy's Birthday was coming up and when it was time to remind PFC JimBob to buy his wife something for their anniversary.

Crap like that along with an insane op-tempo is why I left the Army though. Haven't had a use for a PalmPilot like device since then.

Interesting to hear from someone who actually made his Palm Pilot work well. I tried using one, but I've always found that a simple notepad and pocket calendar work better for me. YMMV, but based on what happened with the Navy's Palm Pilot program, most naval officers preferred the good old fashioned wheelbook or government-issue green logbook.

Imagine if they decide they need to make some custom apps and Apple doesn't allow them in the app store or kicks them out of it. Very funny.

That's not so great, since they're basically un-securable.

It's not like everyone in the military has ultrasecure data on their mobile device. There are 2 people on each aircraft carrier whose full-time job is to stock vending machines.

That sounds like a bit of an urban myth. How many staff are there on an aircraft carrier?

Wikipedia says the Nimitz-class carriers have a compliment of "Ship's company: 3,200; Air wing: 2,480".

I'm not sure what you mean by "staff." There are about 6,000 people on an aircraft carrier when the full airwing is embarked. A handfull of them are civilians, but they usually fill senior administrative positions or provide technical expertise in support of maintenance; they're not there to perform menial tasks like loading vending machines.

There are a relatively small number of enlisted personnel who specialize in "domestic" tasks: cooking, cleaning, etc. They are augmented by larger numbers of very junior enlisted personnel (E-3 and below) who are trained for other jobs but each serve a short stint working in service jobs. For example, a brand new seaman apprentice (E-2) electrician's mate finishes all of his training and reports to a carrier. For his first six months, he doesn't work as an electrician--instead, he gets sent to work in the ship's laundry; in the mess or wardroom; at the post office; cleaning and taking out trash; cutting hair; or serviung as a clerk in one of the convenience stores. When his time is up, he gets to go join his division and do the job he actually trained for.

The job of restocknig the vending machines probably would reduce to about one or two people if that was all they did. In reality the job is spread out among quite a few more people, who also do other things. Typically it's the convenience store staff who do this.

Just checked, it's actually one person, working 12 hours per day (so basically 1.5 FTEs)

Source: http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/206/s...

I don't think that these are seen as tactical devices, but rather as administrative devices. The bulk of an officer's or NCO's job consists of taking care of his people: leadership, training, and management. If everyone had one of these, they could potentially be a very valuable tool for maintaining accountability (military-speak for knowing where everybody is), disseminating instructions and notices, and other mundane administrative and management tasks that take time away from more important things like training and maintenance.

Yes, but who's idea was it?

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