Army eyes smart phones for soldiers in Afghanistan

The Army plans to deploy smart phones and supporting network infrastructure to soldiers in Afghanistan, Lt. Gen. Michael Vane told military bloggers during a roundtable this morning, but he provided few details.

Vane isn't the first senior leader to discuss supplying deployed troops with the technology. Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli told Wired.com on Tuesday that he anticipates deployment of smart phones to soldiers in Afghanistan "very, very soon." And last October, Chiarelli told Nextgov he envisioned equipping every soldier with a smart phone in the near future.

Soldiers in the Afghan Army use smart phones, as well as enemy forces, Vane said. It makes senses to equip U.S. Army troops with the same technology, he said. Doing so will enable them to easily and quickly access what he called "perishable data" rather than using standard Army battlefield networks.

In a speech yesterday during the winter conference of the Association of the United States Army in Orlando, Fla., Chiarelli echoed Vane's comments on enemy use of cell phone technology. Forces that oppose the U.S. benefit from robust cell phone coverage, which allows them to "rapidly employ relatively cheap technologies," he said.

Before the Army can distribute smart phones, it must conduct a risk-benefit analysis, Vane said, which the service will do within the next six to eight months.

Chiarelli, in his Orlando speech, urged the use of unclassified encryption rather than classified encryption to enable distribution of information to a large number of soldiers who do not have security clearances.

Equipping soldiers with smart phones makes sense as 70 percent of the countries in the world already have a mobile phone network infrastructure, Vane said, adding the Army can fill gaps in commercial coverage with its own base stations and antenna towers.

Last September, the Army began testing smart phones at Fort Bliss, Texas, along with Apple iPads and Amazon Kindles, using commercial cell phone carriers. On Thursday, xG Inc. of Sarasota, Fla., said it had delivered deployable cellular base stations to the service for testing. The stations operate over unlicensed frequencies.

The Army needs to empower soldiers with technology that can be fielded more quickly than through the standard 10-year acquisition cycle and that will allow them to communicate "anytime, anywhere" in the world, Chiarelli said.