British Troops To Use iPad For Fire Missions
British troops have begun using a special application for the iPad to learn how to deploy artillery.
The fire missions – used to attack troops from several miles away – have been simulated on Apple‘s iPad in trials at the Royal School of Artillery.
Troops are said to have learned drills and procedures quicker than those in a standard classroom environment.
Lance Bombardier Jason MArkham told BBC’s Newsbeat how it works.
He said: “I’d be at the HQ – the troops on the ground would call me for fire support and they’d give me the target location and a description of the target.
“We’d use all of that information to come up with a solution.
“This has been designed to let us practise, so that when we get out there into theatre we’re a lot slicker.
“It makes it more fun instead of being sat in a classroom looking at a presentation being given information.
“If you’re on a course you can take this back to the block and practise with it, even have little competitions with it.”
Major Rich Gill added: “If we can use this sort of technology, we can probably shorten the amount of training and that is pretty key nowadays when people are so committed to operations in Afghanistan.
“There’s so much they need to do before they go there and when they come back.
“If we can use this to reduce the amount of training it’ll be fantastic.”
The news of the development comes at a time when the armed forces are facing cuts in their budget, but Major Gill insists the iPad’s will be a good investment.
“You can get all the material that you need on there at the right time and it’s really mobile as well. At the time this project came about this was the best bit of hardware on the market.”
“From what we’ve done over in Afghanistan with the training we’ve been through, we don’t really make mistakes.
“The training back here is the best it can be and if we can improve it then that’s exactly what we need to be doing.”
Posted by Editor
on Jul 30 2010. Filed under Latest News, Technology.
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