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Tracking U.S. Enemies? There's an App for That, Says Raytheon

by Caleb Johnson on December 18, 2009 at 03:10 PM

Seemingly every other professional uses an iPhone at work, so why not a soldier? Raytheon, a military contractor, hopes to bring Apple's do-all device to the battlefield soon. According to The New York Times, Raytheon announced Wednesday the "One Force Tracker," which is an application that shows a person's position on a real-time map and provides secure communication between users. This live line between soldiers could reduce the likelihood of friendly fire and other errors. The maps could be updated by GPS to point out certain locations -- like sniper spots or safe positions.

There's one major problem though: an iPhone can only run one app at a time, which would need to change for the military's purposes. But J Smart (yes, that's apparently a name), chief technology officer for Raytheon's Intelligence and Information Systems, has a solution. "Underneath the iPhone is a Mac OS X operating system which is based on Unix, which gives us Unix multitasking," he told the Times. Then, you have to worry about all that multitasking draining the battery, but Smart says Raytheon is working on that, too.

So, it sounds like before too long an iPhone could become standard issue for U.S. soldiers. What's next? An Xbox 360 and a copy of 'Call of Duty' as a teaching tool? Wait a second... [From: The New York Times]

Tags: Apple, Application, cellphone, GPS, iphone, military, raytheon, top, war

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