Lockheed Martin’s DisOPS PDA System For US Military [Lockheed Martin Developing PDA-Laptop System for US Soldiers]

Lockheed Martin, the people that brought you such things as the F-16 Falcon and the Trident missile are now bringing the the US military a new device or more of an integrated system. From Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Lab comes the Distributed Operations (DisOPS) info tech system, which consists of laptops and PDAs being carried by different soldiers in different roles.

The first part of the DisOPS system is the ‘ruggedized’ (Lockheed Martin’s words) laptop that a squad command would carrying. Featuring a touch screen, the squad leader can draw on a map with a stylus, placing icons on an map, making a mission plan. The second part, would be the PDA (also ruggedized) which would sync up with the laptop via satellite, cellular connections, or even WiFi. Geographical information from the squad leader’s map and his annotations on the map would be displayed on the PDA, which would include a GPS unit for exact positioning.

The PDA would provide the locations of other friendly forces, and a digital camera, with the ability to upload pictures back to the squad leader or ‘off-site’. Soldiers carrying the PDA would also to make annotations and send them back to the squad leader. One of the more mysterious features include a ’sniper detection’ feature that is able to detect a sniper’s location, by analyzing and triangulating the sound of the gunshot from multiple PDAs (similar gunshot location systems have been put into use by some police departments in the United States).

No word on the cost, or availability or even if it will come out, but the bigger question is – will it run on Android?