The U.S. Army Pays Apple A Visit

A report posted at Army.mil revealed this week that the US Army's technology command paid Apple a visit at its campus in Cupertino, California, on March 5th. The purpose of the visit was to discuss the use of Apple products in Army business and battlefield operations, the report said.

On the Army’s side, attendees included Maj. Gen. Nick Justice, Research, Development and Engineering Command commanding general and key members of his staff. Apple officials attending the meeting are not named in the report, which reveals that the Mac maker gave group tours of its laboratories and other facilities. Discussions included some examples of Apple technologies currently used by the military, as well as the evaluation of commercial hand-held solutions such as the iPad, the iPhone, the iPod, the iMac, and even MacBooks, which was reportedly the job of the Army's research and development command.

"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, adding that the Army recognized the billions of dollars invested by the industry into developing its devices, the report reveals. "We're continuing to leverage commercial technology for battlefield uses; we can't ignore that kind of existing knowledge," he said. "Our job, as stewards of the taxpayer's dollar, is to adopt and adapt appropriate commercial technology and offer the best possible solution to the warfighter."

Army Technology Live, the military’s official science and technology blog, developed and released its own iPhone app last month, the same report claims. The software acts as a news app, offering up Army technology news with imagery and video. The application is free to download and use on any supported iPhone or iPod touch.

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

"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," Dr. Gerardo J. Melendez, director, CERDEC Command and Control Directorate, 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."

According to Melendez, companies like Apple allow the Army research and development community to leverage commercial business models. Although the meeting between the two parties is well over by now, there are still plans for technical discussions scheduled in the future, according to Army.mil.