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US Military Issuing iPod Touches To Soldiers
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Mon Apr 20, 2009 08:12 PM
from the gi-pod dept.
from the gi-pod dept.
644bd346996 writes "Newsweek has an article about the latest weapons in the US military's arsenal. The iPod Touch and the iPhone are being adapted as general purpose handhelds for soldiers in the field. 'Apple gadgets are proving to be surprisingly versatile. Software developers and the US 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.'"
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The real question is.... (Score:5, Insightful)
The real question is: are the military funded applications sold through the Appstore? Or is the US army jail breaking their phones? Or is Apple providing the military special unlocked iPhones?
Perhaps Apple should consider rerunning their 'think different' campaign - this time with a sniper rather than Ghandi.
Re:The real question is.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Actually, I'd bet that Apple are providing the military with special phones that are locked to an "Apps Depot" where the military can make available special apps they've sanctioned. You don't want a piece of military hardware able to run any old dodgy thing sold through the app store, and you equally don't want the machine unlocked and potentially vulnerable when the soldiers install the latest piece of iPorn for Unlocked Phones that hits the bazaars. Remember the pirate DVDs/VCDs with viruses and rootkits and all kinds of other goodness on them that went through military laptops a while back?
Parent
Re:The real question is.... (Score:5, Informative)
Apple has an enterprise program. You buy the $299 dev licence, and you can install to your own company/platoon/whatever's devices.
Parent
Aren't these things made in china? (Score:5, Insightful)
That's interesting. Does it also allow you to lock it down so that only sanctioned apps can go on it, or so that only fully approved updates can be installed? They're the kind of features I'd be looking for if I had to approve the phone or touch for military applications.
Well that sort of depends on what backdoors the chinese firmware creators left in.
Parent
Parent has a point.... (Score:5, Insightful)
Although I have nothing wrong in general with items made in another country, I woudl think that military items should be created in the country within which it is issued. Take for example, the recent thing about spys infiltrating the national Grid.
Parent
Re:Aren't these things made in china? (Score:4, Funny)
I don't discrimainate, I like any firmware in my backdoor.
Parent
Re:The real question is.... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Some of us absolutely LOVE bush. (Score:5, Funny)
Bush hating
Hey! Some of us absolutely LOVE bush.
Stop the Apple users are gay innuendo!
Parent
Yeah... (Score:4, Funny)
Heard this a few years back in a political discussion, and I must say I agree with it:
"I'm pro-bush, but not the George W kind."
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Re:The real question is.... (Score:4, Insightful)
Parent
Re:The real question is.... (Score:5, Funny)
shove them where the sun don't shine (on your body)
Could you be more specific? This is slashdot, remember.
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Re:The real question is.... (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:The real question is.... (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm a Gandhi loving,
There's not many who truly love Gandhi & respect his teachings who see militarisation of an entertainment device as 'great'.
I'm prepared to believe you're the exception to the rule tho'.
Parent
Re:The real question is.... (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm a Gandhi loving,
There's not many who truly love Gandhi & respect his teachings who see militarisation of an entertainment device as 'great'.
I don't see that as in consistent. I don't agree that Gandhi's approach works everywhere with everyone under all circumstances. His approach of passive resistance works best when confronting a nation of people who see themselves as civilized and decent so it worked against the British. Martin Luther King used Gandhi's approach in the U.S. and that worked well. If the Irish Catholics' resistance to Britain followed Gandhi instead of the IRA, the troubles would have ended sooner and more easily. If the Palestinians used Gandhi's approach against Israel instead of following the PLO there might now be one secular state where people of all denominations were equal.
I don't think Gandhi would have been successful against Hitler or Stalin or Mao. They would have killed him and moved on. There is a time for fighting.
Parent
Re:The real question is.... (Score:4, Insightful)
--Mahatma Gandhi
Parent
Not nitpicking (Score:3, Informative)
The right spelling is Gandhi.
Gan as in "gone" + dhi as in the first portion of 'this'.
Re:Not nitpicking (Score:5, Informative)
The right spelling is Gandhi.
Correct. I am a retard.
Parent
Re:The real question is.... (Score:5, Funny)
thanks, I'll be playing Tetris behind enemy line.
Parent
Re:The real question is.... (Score:5, Informative)
Er... You know that Apple officially supports "Enterprise apps" on iPhone? Which is to say, privately developed apps available on an intranet "App Store". The bonus here is also that these apps do not require Apple approval, just the appropriate develpment licenses.
Next time do a little research before getting sarcastic.
Parent
The EULA (Score:5, Interesting)
We've all had a good laugh at that clause but they may actually be close to breaching it.
Re:The EULA (Score:4, Insightful)
I doubt that US law prohibits the military from developing missiles.
Parent
Re:The EULA (Score:5, Informative)
They're military, they might not even necessarily have to obey any EULA.
In theory, the feds could invoke eminent domain and force Apple to sell the IP rights if necessary.
So Apple has every incentive to be accommodating to their needs...
But most likely they just buy the DISTRIBUTION certificates from Apple, as any developer could, so they can sign and deploy their own apps on their own without necessarily having to put anything on the app store.
Not all apps are necessarily public.
Parent
Re:The EULA (Score:5, Informative)
They're military, they might not even necessarily have to obey any EULA.
In theory, the feds could invoke eminent domain and force Apple to sell the IP rights if necessary.
So Apple has every incentive to be accommodating to their needs...
But most likely they just buy the DISTRIBUTION certificates from Apple, as any developer could, so they can sign and deploy their own apps on their own without necessarily having to put anything on the app store.
Not all apps are necessarily public.
Wrong on too many levels. Your rationale with eminent domain has massive holes in it, never mind the Federal Military Top Secret IP angle. By the way, NeXT had a long history with the CIA. We worked for probably 15 years and continued after the Merger. There were custom builds for a client's need for a massive price.
Parent
What's next? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What's next? (Score:5, Funny)
There's an app for that!
Parent
Microsoft Issuing WinMobile Devices To Soldiers (Score:4, Funny)
In other news... (Score:4, Funny)
Ever wanted to (Score:5, Funny)
Ever wanted to blow up the **** out of terrorists?
There is an app for that.
Hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
I like the idea. Smartphones have enough computing power and sufficient battery life to perform militarily useful functions, with a minimum of added weight to the soldiers gear.
I'm not sure about the platform choice though. One company controls the hardware and software. There are no alternatives in either category that allow you to benefit from prior investments- replacing the hardware or OS requires junking everything you already have. And if the public APIs don't let you do what you need, and Apple can't or won't, it won't do what you need and thats that.
Android, or even Windows Mobile, I think would be better. A lot easier to switch to another device and minimize training costs, a lot easier and cheaper to get a device custom designed and built for specific military applications. These two are far more open- anyone with a properly trained engineering team and some money can make devices for these platforms. You need a specialized gadget integrated? You'll have a dozen companies salivating at defense budget dollars. You'll get it done, balancing capability and cost will be a meaningful choice and you can make it based on the needs and the budget, not because it's the best of limited options.
aren't those thing built in China? (Score:5, Insightful)
what could possibly go wrong?
there have been stories about the Chinese sneaking counterfeit chips into military application some of which have made there way into military aircraft.
using a consumer gadget built in china seems like a truly epically bad idea.
It's about time (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:It's about time (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Why are they just doing this now? (Score:5, Insightful)
PDAs/Smartphones which have the desired functionality have existed for many years before the iPhone/iPod touch. .NET compact framework is much nicer than developing for the iPhone (background processes, yeah!)
And using C# with the
Re:Why are they just doing this now? (Score:4, Informative)
Parent
Re:Why are they just doing this now? (Score:5, Informative)
Parent
Apple used to hate the military (Score:4, Interesting)
Back in the day when the Steves ran Apple there was a very strong understanding the Apple won't sell anything to the military for any reason, especially for warfare. Of course the military wasn't ever directly sold Apple products, but they aquired them through third party purchasers and ended up being in the missile silos anyway.
I would imagine this business decree was tossed out with Jobs to help bolster sales any way they could.
That, my friends, is where my fanboy history ends - I bought a PC and ran linux. The rest I read in the flame wars here.
I've Seen This Movie Before..... (Score:4, Funny)
DEVICE SELECT: DRONE='predator1'
DRONESTATUS=predator1: >IN RANGEONLINEINVENTORY>WEAPONS>AVAIL
WEAPONSAVAIL>MISSILE=0,1,2,3
SELECT MISSILE=3
MISSILE=3> TARGET=2
MISSILE3/TARGET2: 'fire'
ERROR: This device is protected by DRM. Please contact your dealer or reseller, call Apple directly at 1-800-APL-CARE, or you can visit our knowledge base on the World Wide Web at www.apple.com/support/ipodtouch/.
Re:Great idea (Score:5, Insightful)
A mil spec iPod would be too heavy to move without a Humvee and too expensive to give to anyone under the rank of Captain.
Parent
Re:Great idea (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Re:Great idea (Score:4, Insightful)
If this works out, then somebody can build a mil spec iPod from scratch, but as a demonstration of concept, I don't see anything wrong with it. 10 million teenagers can't be too far wrong...
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Your average grunt is joe schmo. I have a few friends who all served in Iraq. All of them had electronic gadgets to help pass the time. They had ipods, laptops, digital cameras, hand held gaming systems etc. One of my friends bought his fancy $2000 digital SLR and it survived no problem. One friend did have his mp3 cd player broken when some guy was throwing rocks at him. Other than that all their gadgets made it back just fine. BUT I am not suggesting Ipods and the like are battle field ready gear. Maybe A
Re:Great idea (Score:4, Insightful)
This. We brought over more personal electronics gear than most people who haven't seen would believe. AND there's PXs on most of the bigger posts that will sell you more. AND Amazon.com ships to APOs (yes we could get to Amazon.com, don't be silly). We brought back more personal electronics gear than we brought over by probably at least an order of magnitude :-). The vast majority of it survived just fine. One guy blew out his X-Box plugging it into the wrong power, and digital camera screens got kinda scratched up from the dust, but in general, consumer spec gear did just fine (iPhones and iPod Touches having glass screens would be a big advantage there. Much harder to scratch).
Now computers... those didn't survive as well. Personal game systems tended to stay in peoples relatively well sealed quarters, so they were mostly fine, but the grit really got into to anything that got taken outside much. Moving parts like hard drives, fans, and CD-ROMs failed a lot on our non-ruggedized laptops. The iPhone/Pods are fairly well sealed, all solid state, and like I said, have glass screens. Get a little plug to put into the ear phone holes and I think they'd have quite a reasonable failure rate.
Parent
Tradeoffs, tradeoffs... (Score:3, Interesting)
Beyond that, though, there is some truth to the old cliche "the perfect is the enemy of the good". Which are you better off with, the Touch running off-the-shelf software for under $250
Re:Great idea (Score:5, Informative)
This kind of case [otterbox.com] is what the iPods get put in. I'd say they're probably close enough to mil spec that it makes the iPods clearly more cost effective. It's not like iPods are particularly fragile to begin with - once you protect them from moisture and sand, the only significant vulnerability that remains is the touch screen itself, which is easily protected with a flip cover. I doubt that temperature is much of an issue, given that they are all solid-state devices.
Another example of an enclosure is this one, [knightarmco.com] for the first-gen touch, shown at the bottom of the page with an attached sniper rifle. This is clearly one of the best-protected iPods in the world. If you read more on that site, you'll see that they have done plenty of testing to ensure that the iPod can survive the shock of the attached rifle being fired numerous times.
Parent
Re:Great idea (Score:4, Interesting)
Not. Unless they are getting milspec units I wonder how many lives are being put in danger by using consumer products in such varied environments.
Soldiers have been using consumer grade electronics in the field for a very long time now. Army procurement in Iraq & Afghanistan is glacial at best and more often than not, its easier to order something stateside and have is shipped over either by the company or your family.
And now for a tragedy in two parts:
Date: December 2004
Setting- SecDef Rumsfeld is taking questions from 2,300 soldiers in a hangar at Camp Buehring, Kuwait.
Part 1.
Army Spc. Thomas Wilson: My question is more logistical. We've had troops in Iraq for coming up on three years and we've always staged here out of Kuwait. Now why do we soldiers have to dig through local landfills for pieces of scrap metal and compromise ballistic glass to up-armor our vehicles and why don't we have those resources readily available to us?
[Applause from the soldiers]
Sec Def Rumsfeld: I missed the first part of your question. And could you repeat it for me?
Army Spc. Thomas Wilson: Yes, Mr. Secretary. Our soldiers have been fighting in Iraq for coming up on three years. A lot of us are getting ready to move north relatively soon. Our vehicles are not armored. We're digging pieces of rusted scrap metal and compromised ballistic glass that's already been shot up, dropped, busted, picking the best out of this scrap to put on our vehicles to take into combat. We do not have proper armament vehicles to carry with us north.
Part 2.
Sec Def Rumsfeld: I talked to the General coming out here about the pace at which the vehicles are being armored. They have been brought from all over the world, wherever they're not needed, to a place here where they are needed. I'm told that they are being - the Army is - I think it's something like 400 a month are being done. And it's essentially a matter of physics. It isn't a matter of money. It isn't a matter on the part of the Army of desire. It's a matter of production and capability of doing it.
As you know, you go to war with the Army you have. They're not the Army you might want or wish to have at a later time.
The End
Parent
Iraq and Motorola Talkabouts (Score:5, Informative)
You may remember that, in the earlier days of the Iraq war, soldiers would write home begging for their families to send them Talkabout FRS radios. Yup, those little handheld radios sold in blister packs at Wal-Mart for camping trips.
Those things are, doubtless, less secure, less durable, less resistant to interference, and less powerful than purpose-built military communications systems would be. However, they had one big advantage: they were available to the soldiers when they needed them.
If the military has trouble getting a mature technology like handheld radios into the hands the troops, you can bet that they'd flub something like handheld computers even worse. Sometimes, it's better to just buy the darned things at Wal-Mart.
Parent
Re:Iraq and Motorola Talkabouts (Score:5, Interesting)
Loved those things. We used them through most of our deployment. You couldn't say everything, but we used code for some stuff or just told people to get to a phone or encrypted radio so you could talk in the clear. The range was short, but usually enough for talking around the camp or for a gate detail or patrol to communicate. It wasn't actually that we had a shortage of milspec radios, it was more that the damned things weigh 25 pounds. Not something you want to be carrying in addition to your weapon, ballistic vest, ammo, helmet, water, etc. We had a small supply of police type radios that could be encrypted for clear communications, but even those are fairly heavy and we had fewer of them. The battalion commander briefly tried to ban them, but we convinced him that we knew how to avoid classified conversations over plain text, and that there were no real practical alternatives.
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Re:How well do they take being dropped / shot at? (Score:5, Funny)
I could shoot 'at' an iPod all day long and not damage it. It's when I accidentally hit the target that there may be problems.
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Re:How well do they take being dropped / shot at? (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Well, I guess this proves it. (Score:4, Funny)
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