Army's Go Mobile puts big computing power into soldiers' pockets
Friday, 11 December 2009
The Army’s ranks these days are filled with a new kind of soldier — tech-savvy and sophisticated, people who grew up playing with PlayStations and Nintendo the way earlier generations played with pop guns and Erector Sets.
Army officials are tapping into the ingenuity of its young workforce and responding to their predisposition for smarter gadgets at the same time by developing an array of Go Mobile devices — new communications and conferencing devices that can fit into a soldier’s pocket while going easy on the service’s pocketbook.
That effort reached a new milestone in late October with the approval of an initial set of smart phones that, with other pocket-sized accessories, offers a way for soldiers to access the Army Knowledge Online portal, a repository of online information, distance-learning tools, e-mail and other resources for 2.6 million Army users. The Web-based service is now part of a broader service known as Defense Knowledge Online.
The Army’s ranks these days are filled with a new kind of soldier — tech-savvy and sophisticated, people who grew up playing with PlayStations and Nintendo the way earlier generations played with pop guns and Erector Sets.