Begun, These Army Phone Wars Have
After 20 years, the Army has finally figured out how it wants to network soldiers together in a warzone: through something like a smartphone. It’s called Nett Warrior, and it’s got the Army very excited. There’s only one problem: Defense companies already want to render it obsolete.
Defense giant ITT picked just the right time to roll out its new secure smartphone. It debuted what it’s calling the GhostRider, pictured above, at the Army’s annual Washington, D.C. gala, known as the Association of the U.S. Army (AUSA) convention. The GhostRider isn’t really a phone — it’s just hosted on a commercial Android smartphone, in this case a Motorola Atrix — it’s a small encryption device, called a crypto, installed on a phone near the battery. Put it together with the smartphone of your choice and it’s a secure phone — exactly what the Army wants to one day issue its soldiers, and is still figuring out how to do.
“It’s called the GhostRider because the crypto is a ghost riding on the phone,” explains ITT vice president Richard Takahashi. “Oh, we’re fans of the comic books, too.”
The idea is that the GhostRider’s crypto can allow secure phone calls and text messages, transmitted over the Army’s data networks, anywhere out in a warzone. A tap-and-hold of the smartphone’s touchscreen turns the phone display red, to signal that the security features are engaged. Send another GhostRider user a secure text, and she’ll be asked to enter a passcode before her phone can receive and decipher it. Its security standards have been certified by the crypto experts at the National Security Agency, ITT tells any visitor to its AUSA pavilion who’ll listen.
That’s for good reason. Figuring out how to secure data is a problem the Army is still grappling with as it figures out whether and how to equip its soldiers with smartphones.
But look at the display on the GhostRider in the photo above. Notice it’s a map, complete with icons that indicate a user’s position, along with those of others on the network. That’s very, very similar to the functionality offered by the Army’s revamped Nett Warrior platform. ITT is offering the GhostRider crypto and software for a maximum of $1,500 per phone. And it’s not shy about where it goes next.
“We think Nett Warrior should be something like this,” Takahashi says. “This can be the smart device.”
Just a few yards away from ITT on the top floor of the Washington Convention Center, the Army is showing off the latest version of Nett Warrior, which it announced to reporters only on Thursday. Nett Warrior depends on a smartphone without a phone called an End User Device, which right now relies on an Android operating system to power a host of apps — especially the mapping functions that the GhostRider also runs. Here’s what Nett Warrior’s display looks like, projected onto a flatscreen TV, when the mapping app is engaged.
The icons tell positioning of the user — that’ll be the blue chevron — allied and subordinate units, and significant places for an operation, like buildings to clear or placements of enemy fighters. (Pinch in to focus, and swipe to move elsewhere on the map.) But Nett Warrior also tells a lot more. Tap the icon of the six blue boxes, and standard-issue apps pop up. One is a feature to call for medevac. Another is a planning feature, so a company commander can send changes to a plan to his platoon and squad leaders. Yet another is a secure messaging system. The one thing Nett Warrior can’t do is make a phone call.
That took a long, long time to develop. As recently as last year, Nett Warrior relied on a cumbersome eight-pound series of wearable computers, peripherals and mapping tools — all of which provided less data to soldiers than the smartphones they already carried around in civilian life. Quietly, over the last few months, the Army gave Nett Warrior a brain transplant in order to salvage the 20-year-old program. They’re happy with it now.
Nett Warrior’s architects have yet to decide what kind of commercial phone will be used to host the End User Device. Last week, the one-star general in charge of the program, Brig. Gen. Camille Nichols, said that she bought 60 Android phones from Best Buy to take to a networking test that begins next week. ITT wants in on that test. And while no one puts it in these terms, it’s possible that the GhostRider — or the next special-brewed phone by the next defense company — could be a Nett Warrior killer.
That’s because the Army is out of money.
Defense budgets are in for a steep, steep decline, all because of the government’s overarching fixation on reducing the budget deficit. That puts the Army’s acquisition programs under heavy scrutiny. Especially future acquisitions — like, oh, say, End User Devices and smartphones. An Army spokesman — a specialist who only gives his name as Johnson — says he’s “supremely, honestly” confident that the Army can afford to issue its soldiers’ smartphones. And that raises the prospect of expensive redundancy between a smartphone and Nett Warrior’s End User Device.
It doesn’t have to be that way. For one thing, not everyone will get Nett Warrior: It’s designed for use only in warzones. Smartphones could be used back at the safety of a base, to host training manuals as well as other, more mundane Army apps. For another, the Army definitely wants a commercially available smartphone, in order to control costs — and it might balk at ITT’s $1,500 price point. Paul Mehney, another Army spokesman, says the Army is testing and testing and testing some more to ensure it thinks through “who needs this capacity” for smartphones and End User Devices precisely so some soldiers don’t end up carrying two devices that largely perform similar functions.
But the Army, frankly, isn’t a very good steward of its own money. A recent internal review found that it had wasted $3 billion-with-a-B annually between 2004 and 2009.
Mehney says that a final decision about issuing smartphones to soldiers will come “in the next couple of years.” ITT is clearly hoping to be in the running. No matter what, Nett Warrior has a leg up: It’s way further along in the development process. But that’s not a guarantee that the program will survive, or avoid yet another major revamping. Nett Warrior may have finally incorporated smartphones into its design. But the Army might still decide it likes smartphones better — and can’t afford both.
Photos: Spencer Ackerman
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