Army Special Operations Command is dumping the Android tactical smartphone for an iPhone
for better situational awareness. Photo: Vesper Case UK.
Posted on 07/19/2016 11:01:08 AM PDT by Swordmaker
U.S. Army Special Operations Command is dumping its Android tactical smartphone for an iPhone model.
The iPhone 6S will become the end-user device for the iPhone Tactical Assault Kit – special-operations-forces version Army’s Nett Warrior battlefield situational awareness tool, according to an Army source, who is not authorized to speak to the media. The iTAC will replace the Android Tactical Assault Kit.
The iPhone is “faster; smoother. Android freezes up” and has to be restarted too often, the source said. The problem with the Android is particularly noticeable when viewing live feed from an unmanned aerial system such as Instant Eye, the source said.
When trying to run a split screen showing the route and UAS feed, the Android smart phone will freeze up and fail to refresh properly and often have to be restarted, a process that wastes valuable minutes, the source said.
“It’s seamless on the iPhone,” according to the source. “The graphics are clear, unbelievable.”
Nett Warrior as well as the ATAC and soon-to-be-fielded iTAC basically consist of a smartphone that’s connected to a networked radio. They allow small unit leaders to keep track of their location and the locations of their soldiers with icons on a digital map.
They are also designed to help leaders view intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance sensor feeds such as video streams from unmanned aerial systems.
The Nett Warrior system uses a Samsung smartphone worn in a chest-mounted pouch and connected to networked radio General Dyanamics AN/PRC-154A Rifleman Radio. Nett Warrior evolved from the Army’s long-gestating Land Warrior program. Army officials began working on that system in the mid-1990s and over the next decade struggled with reliability and weight problems.
The special operations forces’ ATAC and iTAC use a smart phone connected to a Harris AN/PRC 152A radio.
Both radios are part of the Joint Tactical Radio System, but the PRC-152A allows operators to automatically move across different waveforms to talk to units in other services. The Rifleman Radio does not have this capability, the source said.
This is a problem, the source said, because SOF units can communicate with conventional soldiers using Nett Warrior, but it’s only one-way communications. Nett Warrior equipped soldiers can only receive communications from SOF; they cannot initiate or answer SOF units with the Rifleman Radio, the source said.
Military.com reached out to Program Executive Office Soldier’s Project Manager Soldier Warrior to talk about this problem and to see if it was considering changing to the iPhone and possibly trading in the Rifleman Radio for the PRC-152A.
We received the following mail response:
“PEO Soldier has no response to the questions” posed by Military.com, according to PEO Soldier officials.
The Army does have plans to move the AN/PRC-159 radio as a fix to the one-way communications problem, but that is not supposed to happen until 2020 at the earliest, the source said.
As a short-term fix, the Rapid Equipping Force is looking at fielding Harris PRC-152A radio to units such as the 82nd Airborne Division that make up the Global Response Force, the source said.
Hope they carry extra batteries!
Is this a hardened version of the iPhone do you know?
Once Obama read about how easy it wound up being to crack the San Bernardino killer’s iPhone, he ordered our most secret operatives to start using them.
"The iPhone is “faster; smoother. Android freezes up” and has to be restarted too often, the source said. The problem with the Android is particularly noticeable when viewing live feed from an unmanned aerial system such as Instant Eye, the source said.
When trying to run a split screen showing the route and UAS feed, the Android smart phone will freeze up and fail to refresh properly and often have to be restarted, a process that wastes valuable minutes, the source said.
“It’s seamless on the iPhone,” according to the source. “The graphics are clear, unbelievable."
If special Ops adopts the iPhone can the rest of the Army be far behind? — PING!
Thanks to dayglored for the heads up, and pinging ThunderSleeps and Shadow Ace for their lists.
The latest Apple/Mac/iOS Pings can be found by searching Keyword "ApplePingList" on FreeRepublic's Search.
If you want on or off the Mac Ping List, Freepmail me
hey it’s only money...
Will SOF get a replaceable battery version?
The gay soldiers want it hardened.
Who cares about situational awareness / drone Live feed split screen performance.
The real question is how well does the Apple phone handle Pokemon?
/s
Army To Use Pokemon Go To Teach New Soldiers Land Navigation
https://www.americangrit.com/2016/07/13/army-use-poke... Proxy Highlight
6 days ago ... The Army has indicated its intention to integrate Pokemon Go
That was an iPhone 5C, using four year old technology. This is the latest iPhone 6S, which has NOT been broken into by anyone at all.
Samsung's vaunted Knox security kept its unlocking and encryption keys in a supposedly hidden, unencrypted TEXT file in an unsecured Library where anyone could find them if they knew where to look. This was discovered two weeks after the US Government certified them for use for top secret and classified data. LOL!
They make waterproof Iphones now?
Recently saw a very small splash of water on a friends pants, kill her new Iphone!!! S mall spill, not much of a wet spot on her jeans!
Immediately removed from her pocket , removed battery; dead.
Teacup or less, it was stunning that it could happen.
Somehow our troops using Chinese equipment doesn’t make me feel safer.
For waterproofing they keeo them in the smmo boxes.
Me neither. We should be designing and building our own equipment for things like this. There was a time when America had the know-how to do these things.
My nephews expensive new iphone got similarly destroyed two weeks ago by him hanging near a pool.
Booooo! (lol)
Kudos to the military for saving us money by using off the shelf technology. I appreciate them doing that.
I have two old Android phones which I re-tasked to be part of puzzle geocaches. You approach the cache location, perform tasks that move a little metal square that is blocking the camera lens on the hidden phone, and it wakes up and sets up a mobile hot spot where cachers can download a PDF file once they answer some questions on the mini-Apache server I have installed on there.
The phone is recharged by a little solar panel mounted on the pole (a re-tasked solar light) which give just enough power to keep it full.
Once a week it boots up the phones cellular radio and sends a report as to the number of times it’s been accessed.
That’s with a six year old phone.
I have been pointing out that we haven't been able to build in hose a single weapon system for over thirty years and that is insane.
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