Friday, December 18, 2009

smart phones on the battlefield

Sorry to all my regular readers, but this is slightly off topic from usual, but it is to interesting to ignore. So I guess you all (by that I mean me and possibly one other person so far) will just have to bear with me.

RITS (or maybe it will be) iRaTS vs. RATS

It looks like Google and Apple are now competing on (or for?) the battlefield. I don't know about you you, but it makes me feel a little unnerved that our military may be using something like an iPhone (flaky consumer oriented devices) or a DROID (yay!!) on the battlefield. How secure can one of these really be?


  1.  I looked for Raytheon on the list and it doesn't look like they are contributing anything back to the community - suppose that is a good thing in this case.
  2. What happens when one of these RIT/RATs is captured by some enemy force? I can imagine some extremist group clicking around on a 3" touch screen guiding a Drone UAV with multi-touch fingers sliding around. Hopefully some ROM code has been tweaked to add enhanced log-in.
  3. I have already heard that a group in Pakistan/Afghanistan was able to intercept Drone video streams using OTS $26 s/w. Security gaps already exist -what else is there being exposed in the open by using an iPhone.
Conclusion. I really would feel more secure about this if DOD sticks with RATS instead of iRTS (or whatever it is called). Linux is designed to be deployed, OS X is not. In this case, the Moto DROID commercial really says it all!