We cover a lot of military research here on CrunchGear, largely because they have the coolest toys. But the truth is that the vast array of gadgets, cameras, sensors, and weaponry available to the modern warrior make him have less in common with your stereotypical G.I. than with a blogger like yours truly. And when Special Operations Command needed to produce a force-wide fleet of devices to coordinate location, communication, and so on, what do you think they opted for? Yep. Score one for the fandroids.
Android has been suggested as the platform of choice (along with some legacy Windows systems) for the next generation of the Tactical Situational Awareness Application Suite, or TactSA. It’s the toolset that every special ops guy will have available, and will run everything from the map app to file sharing and chat to the whiteboard app they’ll be using instead of… well, a real whiteboard, I suppose.
As Wired points out, the open source nature of Android is helpful, too, since the military employs many skilled developers. The final version of the TactSA may look nothing like stock Android (in fact, that’d be pretty weird), but Android as a base is a great place to start for a multi-platform communications tool.
I wonder if the military will get early access to Gingerbread?