U.S. Military Using iPod touch for "Networked Warfare"
April 20th 2009 12:12pmMilitary officials say iPod hasn't been hacked, is cheap, and robust enough for the battlefieldApple is the clear leader in the mobile music player category with its dominating iPod lineThe company is also a leader in the high-end smartphone market with its iPhoneWhen Apple first thought up the iPod touchthe engineers probably didn’t think much outside the realm of musicvideoand games. Games may dominate the civilian App Storebut the U.Sgovernment has taken the iPod touch and extended the device to serve functions that Apple likely never dreamed ofIn the pasthandheld devices for soldiers were large and costly devices that tended to be very narrowly focused in what they could doSoldiers were using digital translators in the field to speak with the local population for instance. Soldiers now need to access much more data than simple translations and the military is using the iPod touch for an increasing variety of tasksAccording to military officials"networked warfarerequires each solider to be linked electronically to other troops and weapon systemsThe iPod touch is relatively cheapeasy to useand very robust in the applications it can run. Soldiers are using the touch in the field already for all sorts of tasks from controlling bomb-disposing robots to calculating ballistics tables for snipersThe Army also says that the iPod has yet to be hackedAn Indiana company called Next Wave Systems is developing an application for the iPhone and iPod touch that would allow soldiers to take a picture of street signs and get up-to-date intel on the street and local populationThe application would be able to provide pictures of the local area and any suspects questioned at the location. The Marine Corpsis funding the development of an app that would allow soldiers to take images of detainees and upload them to a biometric database for easier searching and follow up later.
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