“Captain Jonathan J. Springer reached into his own pockets to produce the $26,000 needed to develop a new iPhone app, one specifically designed for American soldiers battling the Taliban,” Terrence O’Brien reports for Switched.
“The 31-year-old soldier worked with programmers to bring his idea of a navigation and targeting app to life,” O’Brien reports. “The result, called ‘Tactical Nav,’ should soon be available in the iTunes App Store for $0.99… The app is currently awaiting approval from Apple, but, once it’s approved, Captain Springer may start work on an iPad edition.”
O’Brien reports, “The app allows soldiers to snap photos of waypoints, and plot them on a map. These reference photos and coordinates can then be sent to other units to coordinate attacks and artillery fire. The app can be used not only to direct artillery, but also to call in helicopter support.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Paul G.” for the heads up.]
Awesome!
I just may buy this app.
Not because I will ever use it, but to contribute to the cause.
@The Confuzed1 above: That’s a good idea. I’ll buy it too. MDN, please post a follow-up article when the app is finally approved.
Ah, the entrepreneur spirit alive and well.
For .99, I wonder if anyone could buy his app and call in their own helicopter strike? LOL – kidding folk! Just kidding, jeez.
Cool! I can’t wait to buy it and call in a strike on Wasilla, Alaska!
Umm, that’s great, but any reasonably funded enemy, and that includes the Taliban, can just buy it too. If any western military force is going to use the iPhone for military specific apps then they should not be in the open domain of the iTunes App Store. The whole idea of soldiers using iPhones is fraught with danger – any soldier’s iPhone falling into enemy hands contains a treasure trove of information for enemy intelligence gathering. This is pretty basic soldiering stuff. On ops you don’t carry ANYTHING personal – not letters, not diaries, not photos, not music, not marked maps, etc.
uh,…. The Taliban are hiding out in caves in Afghanistan, and those caves are right beside cell towers providing 3G service?
Finally, I can call for an airstrike on my annoying neighbors!
Oh yeah, and to contribute to the cause. Help the soldier pay for his investment.
@ Milint,
“On ops you don’t carry ANYTHING personal – not letters, not diaries, not photos, not music, not marked maps, etc.”
I guess that would rule out my custom made, monogramed condoms.
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Spudly writes, “Cool! I can’t wait to buy it and call in a strike on Wasilla, Alaska!”
So much for civility.
Put me down for picking up the app as well.
I hope the military picks up the tab for the app development if they start using it.
And until then, let the .99 sales rack up for the guy.
@ Spudly – My daughter lives in Wasilla. Please post the coordinates of your home so I can do a preemptive strike.
Of course the Taliban will be the first thousand purchasers of this app. Doh!
@ thedude : According to Apple, the iPhone 4 uses a combination of “GPS, Wi-Fi, and cellular towers” to accurately determine location. However, I suspect that the US military will be using add-on GPS receiver hardware in lieu of the “Wi-Fi and cellular towers.” These are already commercially available from such manufacturers as TomTom.
@ Milint: I suspect in this case that all crucial data will be held behind not only the initial iPhone passcode, but inside apps offering their own level of encryption. Not only that, but don’t forget the remote wipe feature of contemporary smart-phones such as the iPhone. Isn’t it possible that this can be automatically activated when out of range of a portable relay, for example? Salling Clicker have offered similar mechanisms for a _long_ time.
Do some people on this forum deliberately expose their lack of ability to consider viable solutions because they want to be made to appear foolish? Answers on a postcard.
Just a FYI.
If you go to the app store and search for tactical nav, there IS an app called tactical navigator already up there, different app and different developer. It’s $2.99
Keep that in mind if you are keeping an eye out for the app in the article.
But if the app is available to everyone, the enemy will be able to use it just as well. That doesn’t make much sense.
First, $26,000 is outrageous! Second, shouldn’t he distribute this to the troops for free rather than selling it? The army should reimburse him for his outlay.
twat comments about the enemy using it. Perhaps just perhaps the developers may have thought of that? Because you arses did within seconds of the story breaking.
Well played Diskgrinder.
Don’t be an ass, it was a very good question, anything can be hacked thease days, and if you don’t think it can’t you are a fool.
All the encryption in the world will not save a bloodthirsty people from doing what they live to die for.
So understand your enemy first, before you start laughing at what posibly could be a reality.
They very well could steal and crack the code of of a iPhone and it’s Apps, if they can build God forbid a mass distructive weapon, don’t close your eyes to a real pisibility of the impossibile.
Hey Spudly – Loooove it! I am right behind you! “my “get out the vote” gun site target is squared-up on that cheap Home Depot monstrosity.
Capt. Springer will get my dollar.
If this app gets out there without adequate safeguards, Capt Springer may be done for “aiding and abbetting the enemy”. I repeat, sharp end soldiers (not talking about the base huggers), carrying iPhones is potentially a security nightmare.
@What? No, custom monogramed condoms are OK and to be encouraged. In fact the good looking camels wouldn’t have it any other way!
Guess as usual you can’t practice what you preach. Tolerance huh? Two more years with your village idiot, hope we can afford it.
There will be safeguards…
You think everyone has access to call in an airstrike?
And it probably isn’t going to be a “press here, airstrike incoming 10 seconds later” like a video game.
It will be more likely something that will give the user the exact coordinates etc. They will then have to use the normal channels to call it in, basically time saving and more accurate targeting.
After re-reading the article
“The app allows soldiers to snap photos of waypoints, and plot them on a map. These reference photos and coordinates can then be sent to other units to coordinate attacks and artillery fire. The app can be used not only to direct artillery, but also to call in helicopter support.”
Sounds to me like augmented reality crossed with google maps.
So, your saying the Taliban can get a signal in a cave but I can’t get one in my home in Orange County?!?!?
$26K is outrageous? How do you know? If it’s a pretty simple app, it’s a fair price. But iOS apps of any complexity at all take months to develop and requires expenses for design, QA, and testing. An app doesn’t have to be complicated to take over $100K to develop.
If you think that’s high, I humbly recommend that you shut up and go to write your own app.
So if apple approved this app they support war and killing of people? would be funny since this app could potentially be very offence to allot of people, just like the manhattan app. I don’t like the Taliban fighters either but apple us walking a very fine line here. This is an all made for killing people.
This soldier needs to rethink his distribution idea. He wants the military to use it. He needs to buy the phones, load the ap, then re-sell the phones to the military for $9873.23 each as a pre-loaded nav device. It would get approved by the military much faster that way. And as a bonus, he can include a $756.98 hammer as an emergency destruction utility device as well.
@Richie
Dude, too funny!
Most of the enemy try to severely restrict their cell phone use because they know we can track them. Next, this app is not intended as a stand alone item – it’s designed to work with and provide information to the IT systems behind the front line – which I would assume the enemy does not have – THUS, they cannot profit from it very easily. Finally, it would be fairly easy to design an app that required some form of authentication – so if an iOS device is lost, stolen, or captured, it would be rendered useless to the enemy, and make this app useless to them as well.
The military is well ahead of all your questions… please move along in an orderly manner.
@Milint
What? Talibanis can call artillery and helicopter strikes? Oh, shit …
Hold on … talibanis have iPhone 4?
Then … just run Find MyPhone … and problem solved!
On the other hand >$500B US military budget and soldiers put own $26K to get talibanis. WTF is happening in the US?