This is cool. Thanks to David for giving me the heads up on this one. All I have to say is, ‘cry havoc, and let loose the mobile apps of war’. lol It is about damn time and I look forward to other interesting tools to pop up.
The big one here, is encryption. If we are to learn anything at all in this war, and of the wars of history, is never underestimate the enemy. They have iPhones and computers too, and more than likely they will try to crack this stuff, much like they hacked the drones. Hell, they will just download these mobile apps off of iTunes and just use them for their own little private war.
All in all though, this is good, and I think as soon as the industry gets revved up for this stuff, there will be some competition over the market share, and only the best and most secure applications will win. I know my iPhone and the legions of other contractor’s iPhones and Blackberries will be hungry for anything that comes up. –Matt
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One Force Tracker for iPhone.
December 16, 2009
By ROY FURCHGOTT
One Force Tracker, iPhone software from Raytheon.
Is the iPhone going to war?
On Wednesday at the 2009 Intelligence Warfighting Summit in Tucson, Raytheon, the military contractor, announced an iPhone application that tracks friends and foes, shows their positions on live, real time maps and provides secure communications.
Called the One Force Tracker, the Raytheon iPhone software can also be used by first responders like police, firemen and emergency medical technicians.
The app works on a standard iPhone, said J Smart, chief technology officer for Raytheon’s Intelligence and Information Systems. “We are really delighted to be leveraging Apple’s innovation.”
The adaptation of the iPhone to military use is somewhat unusual, as technology more often trickles from the military to the consumer market. But this is a rare case of consumer hardware and software concepts being adapted for military use.
For instance, crowdsourcing, which has volunteers use cellphones to report real-time traffic flow, could be adapted to turn each soldier into a reporting unit, delivering real-time data about position and status.
Communications resemble social sites like Facebook, in which your friends would be represented by a military unit and could be used to track the position of, and communicate with, other units.
Maps with an overlay of points of interest are familiar to every GPS user. The Raytheon app would use the same concept, but points of interest might be known sniper sites or safe fallback positions.