Army Develops Android-Based Framework For Battlefield Ops 80
gabbo529 writes "The United States Army is developing an Android-based smartphone framework and suite of applications for tactical operations. With the marriage between technology and military continuing to strengthen, more soldiers are getting phones for on-the-field operations. Already, the military has developed the Joint Battle Command-Platform, or JBC-P Handheld, which has an app that can be used to mark warning signals to future soldiers."
Re:OSS - Bad Idea (Score:5, Informative)
There's no GPL issue. The military simple doesn't release the software. The GPL allows organizations to keep their source code private as long as they don't try to redistribute the software. What the military does is the functional equivalent of Google making proprietary kernel mods for their internal version of Linux, except the "organization" happens to have a few million employees. Sometimes they do release military software to the public, but in that case if the compiled binary isn't classified, the source has to have been scrubbed for classified information before compilation. So releasing source wouldn't be an issue anyway.
Some background information (Score:2, Informative)
Just to get some solid information out there to counter the "hurr durr soldiers playing angry birds" stuff. The Army has been planning how to utilize mobile devices for a while. Implementing everything takes a lot of time, however, because of bureaucratic regulations. (Anyone who's worked corporate IT has an idea.) It's basically a three-phase plan, which is pretty much forked into separate projects at this point.
Phase 1- Develop mobile apps/webapps for unclassified material. (As mentioned above, search the App Store/Market for FA53 and you'll find quite a few of these.) This is non-tactical stuff, simply leveraging the number of soldiers who already own smartphones. Happening now.
Phase 2- Develop technologies to comply with federal IT security standards, to allow for apps for sensitive (still unclassified) material. Once all the pieces are in place (at-rest encryption, smart card access for multifactor authentication, few other things), likely see an official Army device. Likely Android, but WP7/BB are still possibilities, they're just farther back on jumping the hurdles. (Apple is out of the running at this point unless I'm totally misreading the tea leaves) Happening in the next few years.
Phase 3- Go tactical. This will most certainly be a custom device (as discussed in the article), which will resemble the current Android experience very little. (No Market, no root, etc.) Significant infrastructure challenges still exist here (the Army cell network doesn't exist, yet), and that's not even touching on all the security issues revolving around classified material. It's a lot harder to lose a mapping system attached to a vehicle than a pocket device. It'll happen, but it won't be anytime soon for large-scale Army fielding. Can't comment on what may or may not be in development for SOCOM, though.