[FanIn80]

Wow. Now this is interesting... I never thought I'd see something like this come up.

Maj. Gen. Nick Justice, Research, Development and Engineering Command commanding general and key members of his staff traveled to Apple headquarters March 5.

Apple officials gave the Army group tours of its laboratories and other facilities and talked about some examples of where the military is already using Apple technology. The Army's research and development command is evaluating commercial hand-held solutions such as iPad, iPhone, iPod, iMac, and MacBook platforms.

"The Army is moving away from big-green-box solutions and toward those that will adapt along with our warfighters on the battlefield," Justice said.

"Apple technologies offer unique and proven solutions with intuitive designs that allow users to learn quickly without a training manual," said Ron Szymanski, CERDEC's lead computer scientist on the project. "The Army would like to leverage Apple's experience when designing military applications."

Engaging companies such as Apple allows the Army research and development community to leverage commercial business models as well, said Dr. Gerardo J. Melendez, director, CERDEC Command and Control Directorate.

"As we push to develop more commercial capabilities to meet Army information and knowledge management needs, it's important that we engage companies such as Apple because we stand to benefit just as much from their lessons learned and best practices," Melendez said. "Eliminating unnecessary processes or degrees of trial and error can only help us as we transition applications that can be deployed to numerous tactical levels throughout the Army."

http://www.army.mil/-news/2010/03/22...-for-soldiers/