US Special Forces to use custom Pocket PCs

Misinformation is a killer, especially when it occurs in the midst of battle. Give a pilot the wrong co-ordinates and your own soldiers may be the ones on the receiving end of an F117 air-strike, not the half-mile distant SCUD launcher you

Misinformation is a killer, especially when it occurs in the midst of battle. Give a pilot the wrong co-ordinates and your own soldiers may be the ones on the receiving end of an F117 air-strike, not the half-mile distant SCUD launcher you originally had in mind. Naturally, this is a bad thing.

According to this New Scientist article, the Pentagon has commissioned a special combat targeting system for its Special Forces soldiers to combat accidental misinformation. The system itself centres around a custom built Pocket PC.

Someone at the Pentagon is obviously a Star Wars fan, as the system has been given the acronym JEDI, or Joint Expeditionary Digital Information (more fuel to the argument that 95% of military acronyms are chosen solely on the basis that they should sound 'cool' and imposing).

The JEDI system will include a laser rangefinder, GPS positioning, satellite phone capability and text messaging. Finally, Special Forces will have access to the same wonderful technology that allows tens of millions of people around the world to send risqué ASCII messages to each other every day when they really should be working.

Naturally, hardware survivability is a prime consideration if the unit is to be used in a battle situation. To test JEDI's ability to withstand hard use, it was given to a group of US Army personnel to be used in a game of football – as the football. When full time was called, the JEDI unit worked flawlessly.

The JEDI system will go into active service at some point in 2003.