“Maj. Gen. Nick Justice, Research, Development and Engineering Command commanding general and key members of his staff traveled to Apple headquarters March 5,” Thompson reports. “Apple officials gave the Army group tours of its laboratories and other facilities and talked about some examples of where the military is already using Apple technology. The Army’s research and development command is evaluating commercial hand-held solutions such as iPad, iPhone, iPod, iMac, and MacBook platforms. ‘The Army is moving away from big-green-box solutions and toward those that will adapt along with our warfighters on the battlefield,’ Justice said.”
MacDailyNews Take: Major General Nick Justice. Now that’s a movie name!
Thompson reports, Justice said the Army recognized the billions of dollars invested by industry to develop its devices. ‘We’re continuing to leverage commercial technology for battlefield uses; we can’t ignore that kind of existing knowledge,’ he said. ‘Our job, as stewards of the taxpayer’s dollar, is to adopt and adapt appropriate commercial technology and offer the best possible solution to the warfighter.'”
Within RDECOM [Research, Development and Engineering Command], the Communications-Electronics Research and Development Center has developed numerous handheld command and control solutions and is supporting the development and transition of two iPhone applications: COIN Collector, a counter-insurgency information collection tool, and MilSpace, a combined planning and social networking environment,” Thompson reports.
“The Army’s official science and technology blog, Army Technology Live, released a public iPhone application last month. The app puts Army technology news, updates and media, such as images and video, in one location. The Army Technology Live iPhone application is available as a free download from the Apple iTunes Store,” Thompson reports. “‘Apple technologies offer unique and proven solutions with intuitive designs that allow users to learn quickly without a training manual,’ said Ron Szymanski, CERDEC’s lead computer scientist on the project. ‘The Army would like to leverage Apple’s experience when designing military applications.'”
“Engaging companies such as Apple allows the Army research and development community to leverage commercial business models as well, said Dr. Gerardo J. Melendez, director, CERDEC Command and Control Directorate,” Thompson reports. “‘As we push to develop more commercial capabilities to meet Army information and knowledge management needs, it’s important that we engage companies such as Apple because we stand to benefit just as much from their lessons learned and best practices,’ Melendez said. ‘Eliminating unnecessary processes or degrees of trial and error can only help us as we transition applications that can be deployed to numerous tactical levels throughout the Army.'”
Thompson reports, “The meeting ended with plans for future technical discussions between the organizations.”
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Davewrite” for the heads up.]
So it WILL BE Apple making HAL. yay!
Lets see… I want tanks [tap] here, [tap] here… and [tap] here. And I want high yield explosions [tap] here, [tap] here… and [tap] here!
…check Google Maps for a lunch spot with WiFi and… oh wait was that a Quiznos?
Cool!
Go Apple!!!
New meaning to spinning beach ball of death.
Welcome to Skynet!
Hmmm…dropping nukes to your enemies all while u enjoy an elegant, easy to use, interface at the comfort of your caoch; and all while listening to your favorite songs. iPhone does pwn???
Looks like Apple wil be moving into the Enterprise market.
couch*…I mean
warfighters ?
the American military don’t mince their words do they..
about time they realize they want to ‘eliminate unnecessary processes or degrees of trial and error they must finally realize hey tons of ppl flocking over to apple what are we still doing with Microsoft lol how much will apple make this year in gov contracts?
..but, but can it multitask? I mean, if I want to drop a nuke and call mom at the same time, will it work?
Does that mean that the Army will not be dragging a “Big Ass Table” behind every tank? Has someone told Ballmer and Gates about this?
Somebody must be doing something right to get the attention of the US military.
or maybe wrong depending on your perspective.
I gotta think that ultimately better access to information will save lives in a conflict scenario.
Interesting to see a bunch of old school hippies at Apple teaming up with the man to solve these problems.
How about a bullet proof ipod and a special shirt pocket over the heart that is fitted to hold it in a protective position?
Better find a place here to manufacture the gear. Wouldn’t want my military electronics manufactured in China. (no offense, China. I’m just saying…).
Hmm, the best army in the world is using macs?! Here in Switzerland (Hobby-Army, no wars for around 500 years) we just had a big scandal, the army spent millions on computersystems that actually never worked. I posted a comment in a newspaper, “get a mac” – which nobody took seriously, I got a lot of “mac is a toy computer”-replies… Interesting….
Ooooh . . . . . . the camoPad!
Did they get a tour of Apple’s “skunkworks” as well?
I wonder if Jobs asked for a tour of Area 51 in return.
One word:
EVE
MDN word: tax — a propos.
Not exactly surprising given that the Army was a major P.A. Semi client before Apple’s acquisition, and the fact that continued public sector involvement from Apple was a government condition of the deal.
Inbetween lattes, wipe some muzzie terrorists off the face of the earth with multitouch controls on an iPad controlling drones
@Asterix
That “Mac is a toy” myth is still alive here in the US. I don’t know if there is an Apple store in Switzerland or not, but those go along way to dispelling that notion. IT guys in Big Blue shops here in the US use to spread that myth back in the 80’s when “real” computers that ran real applications had a command line interface (DOS) and the Mac’s silly mouse and graphical screen was more for kids and artsy fartsy types. BTW, the Army buying into the iPhone, iPad, Mac ecosphere will probably be huge for apple. Would someone please front me $23k so I can buy 100 shares.
As an ex-Army Intel officer and longtime Apple employee, I really feel sorry for the Army brass having to walk around Apple in uniform. They seriously stick out like a very sore thumb….
MacDailyNews Take: Major General Nick Justice. Now that’s a movie name!
XD
@Al
Steve Jobs is from area 51!
You really think he is from this world? I’m just glad he came
in peace! Or we’d all be up the creek!