Wednesday, October 21, 2009

Sending Androids To War

Its Facebook Mobile for soldiers:

Google's mobile operating system Android has won plenty of adherents among cellphone makers and gadget manufacturers since its 2007 debut. Now defense contractor Raytheon is preparing it for a more urgent mission: saving lives in places like Afghanistan and Pakistan.
Using Android software tools, Raytheon engineers built a basic application for military personnel that combines maps with a buddy list. Raytheon calls the entire framework the Raytheon Android Tactical System, or RATS for short. Mark Bigham, a vice president of business development in Raytheon's Intelligence and Information Systems unit, says the company selected Android because its open-source nature made developing applications easy.
Every part of RATS is tailored for use on a battlefield. A soldier could make an unmanned plane a "buddy," for instance, and track its progress on a map using his phone. He could then access streaming video from the plane, giving him a bird's eye view of the area. Soldiers could also use the buddy list to trace the locations of other members of their squad.
RTWT.

Then, in the comments tell me what you think Corporal Jones of the USMC should do when his fireteams won't stop texting each other or updating their Facebook status.

3 comments:

Broken Gauge said...

what happens when that cell phone gets lost? what happens when the wrong person finds it?
that seems like a pretty big security problem right there. all the enemy has to do to find out where you're at, or your buddies are at, is just steal your damn phone.

even though the military likes to get accountability for all it's shit, privates will be privates. we always lose our shit, or it gets stolen cause we don't secure it. everyone in the military is guilty of that to some degree.

they create all this cool stuff to supposedly help us, but seriously...too much information. not a single person needs streaming video from a uav on their cell phone. that's straight up retarded lol.

a military works, not because everyone knows what's going on, but because we are disciplined enough to follow through what's asked of us, even though we have no idea what in the blue hell is happening.

seeing as how i'm just a lowly PFC in the army, go ahead and ignore this little rant. but in my opinion the way we fight is becoming increasingly high tech. it's just all more shit i'm gonna have to dump if i'm ever unlucky enough to survive a nuclear attack. emp will knock out my cell phone, radio, nvg's, shit even my red dot sight.

i can only speak from my own experiences in the army, but no one knows the basics any more. why learn how to use a compass, when we get issued gps? why bother with the iron sights, when i have this sweet ass scope? why bother looking for ied's when i could be getting a birds eye view on my 3" screen?

but i digress. besides, what are the chances CPL Jones' guys could even get a signal? lol.

MeatAxe said...

Hi Broken Gauge

First of all, thanks for reading, thanks for your comment and thank you for your service to the USA.

Secondly, I have no intention of ignoring your points, which are interesting and valid, especially the part about not needing the full strategic picture of the theater in full motion video with status updates from CENTCOM's Twitter feed and buddy chat, in order to do your one job.

Its good to be reminded that wars are fought by people, not machines.

Thanks again,

Meataxe

Atom Smasher said...

I agree. To this layman it seems like a little bit of information overload. Heinlein's Sgt. Jelal would not have approved.

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