Three organizations within the Department of Defense – the U.S. Army, Air Force and Defense Information Systems Agency – have entered into a “transformative three-year Joint Licensing Agreement for enterprise licenses and software assurance” with Microsoft. In other words, the folks whose job it is to fight foreign combatants will soon be using Windows 8.

“Microsoft has longstanding relationships with the U.S. Army, the U.S. Air Force and DISA, and we are honored to expand our support of ongoing technology modernization efforts across all three organizations,” said Tim Solms, general manager, Microsoft Department of Defense Business. “This agreement enables us to provide the best technology tools to an incredibly broad range of servicemen and servicewomen across the DoD, and we are looking forward to implementing to support their mission goals.”

The deal isn’t some small agreement either, as Microsoft reports that nearly 75 percent of all DoD personnel will be switched over to Windows 8. Employees will also have access to Microsoft Office 2013 and Share Point 2013 Enterprise. The latter will “unlock new levels of cross-agency information sharing through improved enterprise search and social communications features while powering advanced business intelligence and reporting capabilities.”

So, how much is this deal worth to Microsoft? The DoD says that the three year agreement is worth $617 million. Even then, the DoD says this is the best deal it has ever received for Microsoft desktop software licenses. The Army in particular will save $70 million each year over the next three years thanks to the agreement.

Windows 8 might not be catching on at the consumer level, but it seems that the company is still king of the enterprise/government market. It may want to keep a watchful eye on Google though as the company’s Apps for Business service is picking up steam.

The military is deploying what they call the Expeditionary Lab – Mobile to locations in Afghanistan. The lab is a simple 20 feet long shipping container that’s packed with the latest technologies including a 3D printer, industrial CNC machine, plasma cutters and more.

The tools inside the lab let the engineers make new parts for guns and other equipment on the spot in Afghanistan instead of having to ship the new equipment from overseas. It reduces the cost of shipping, but also means that soldiers will get immediate access to potential life saving equipment.

What’s interesting is the use of 3D printers and CNC machines. These technologies can crank out custom made parts for guns, armor and other equipment that soldiers will need on the field. It’s already been proven that 3D printers can make parts for a gun so we might start seeing the proliferation of plastic weapons on the battlefield.

There is currently only one lab deployed in Southern Afghanistan, but the military is planning on deploying a second to the Eastern part of the nation in the fall. They will also be keeping one in the states for natural disaster support.

I’ve always been a firm believer in the military’s role of advancing technology. What’s different this time is that the technology has already existed for some time. REF’s director, Col. Peter Newell, said that 3D printers “are not really inventing anything new; they are modifying something that exists already so they can do something else.” That might be the military’s key contribution to 3D printing. We might soon see a future where 3D printers not only create, but augment current technologies to do new things.

[h/t: Military.com]

According to TechNewsDaily, the military wants the Kinect for its use as a head tracking tool. The Army already uses such equipment, but it comes into the form of expensive helmets that pilots wear. If the technology powering Kinect could be implemented into the helmets, it would be a great cost effective maneuver for the Army.

On top of Kinect features possibly coming to the combat helicopters of the future, the Army is also playing around with the idea of implementing “Minority Report” style displays and interactive elements. This would allow pilots to see enemy and friendly units in real time and even report on damage based on where the pilot is looking.

Like always, technology that comes from the military makes its way into the private sector soon enough. The Army talks of a future where regular civilian vehicles like airplanes could be using similar head tracking technology in the next few years.

Even though military technology is still pushing consumer tech, wouldn’t it be wild if video games started to be the dominating force in technology? The Kinect is already starting to get some pretty wild applications of its own that could innovate entire industries.

Do you think video game technology will start to inspire more and more real world applications? Let us know in the comments.

The common answer to a question like this is an emphatic no. We need out fighting men and women to be happy, because without great morale, our troops will start to suffer. This is what a commenter (rjm56) had to say about contact with home:

“Long ago (very but don’t ask more) as a ground pounder Marine there were often delays in getting snail mail. Our military tried real hard to get it to the troops but movement, equipment failures don’t help. It really is very important to communicate with home as you are often is a strange place wondering who death will take next. Today’s world of instant communication would have been a dream. Regardless of even being heartbreaking at times (mom’s cooking vs. c-rat? 99% of moms win) moral goes way up with home communications. I agree, keep it going. If the soldier in question disobeyed orders, it will cost him some pay, a stripe or whatever. Human error happens and as a soldier we are held accountable for the screw up. No reason to punish the rest by going back to snail mail.”

The guy has a point. number one being how do you punish over a million men and women because of the actions of one misguided friend? I understand that she was doing what she thought was the right thing, but the military has policies in place for a reason. So then the question becomes, “how do we stop this from happening again?” The easiest answer is tho further the education of the men and women fighting overseas. Explain why we notify people of loss the way we do, and explain the process of how the notification takes place.

The difficult answer is to go back to a blackout with censored mail that can take months to get back and forth. I’m pretty sure neither the families, the soldiers, or command want that to happen. Because a happy Army is an effective Army, and an effective Army is nearly unstoppable in this day and age. If we limit our soldiers capacity to communicate with their families, we are basically saying that we do not trust them to make the correct decisions we have trained them to make. So please, let’s have more education and not a quick, irrational response.

But what if a simple Facebook communication led to the heaviest news of your life?

That’s what happened to Army wife Ariell Taylor-Brown, who was tipped about an emergency situation via Facebook. The message from a woman in her husband’s unit led to the phone call that gave Taylor-Brown the devastating news: Her husband, Staff Sgt. Christopher Brown, had been killed in action.

“A girl in his platoon, she wrote me [on Facebook] and she told me to call her immediately, it was an emergency. I didn’t know what she wanted. And she told me over the phone. I was in front of my kids, and I completely had a meltdown.”

Of course, this is against military protocol, which requires a face-to-face notification by military officials. Apparently, they came to tell her about two hours after she had found out via Facebook message and the phone call.

According to military officials at Fort Carson in Colorado, three soldiers were involved in the information leak. It started as a Facebook message which was passed down the line through the three soliders, eventually winding up with Taylor-Brown.

“It was a horrible way for me to find out. She didn’t even give me a chance. I could have been driving and I could have harmed myself learning this,” Taylor-Brown said.

Horrible indeed. Although she didn’t get the full story until the phone call happened, you have to think that the Facebook wall post from a fellow soldier speaking of emergencies gave her all the information she needed. What a terrible and lonely moment for any human being to have to go through.

The U.S. military’s inventory of unmanned aerial vehicles, will grow to 645 aircraft in fiscal 2022 from about 445 in fiscal 2013, which is an increase of 45%. The total is in line with the military’s budget restraints going forward.

“The military departments adjusted their plans to comply with a constrained top line by procuring fewer aircraft than desired,” Deputy Defense Secretary Ashton Carter wrote in a letter to the leaders of the U.S. House Armed Services Committee.

The Defense Department plans to spend $770 billion on aviation assets from 2013 to 2022. This includes fighter jets, attack helicopters, airlift and cargo aircraft, combat search and rescue aircraft, air refueling planes, bombers, anti-ship and submarine aircraft, drones, training platforms and other aircraft used by Special Operations forces. Annual funding levels will peak at $80 billion in 2022, according to the Pentagon.

The Air Force “plans to continue aggressive funding” for a new long-range bomber with nuclear capabilities, according to the aviation report. The bomber would reach its initial capability in the mid-2020s, according to the Pentagon. The Defense Department plans to “hold down” the unit cost to “ensure sufficient production” of 80 to 100 bombers, according to the report. And they are also starting to look at a 6th generation fighter tabbed the F-X to replace the brand new F-22. Before you freak out, remember that the F-22 is new now, but this is a 30 year plan. In 30 years, who knows where military technology will be.

DoD Aviation Plan

The video, as seen below, shows the robot leap to the roof of a small building in a single bound. The robot has an onboard stabilization system that helps control landings and stabilize the view from its onboard video uplink.

Funding for the development of the ‘Sand Flea’ was provided by DARPA, JIEDDO, and the U.S. Army’s Rapid Equipping Force. It’s easy to see why the military might want a robot of this sort to disarm (or arm) bombs, provide remote viewing, and perform other dangerous tasks on a battlefield.

Boston Dynamics describes itself on its website as “an engineering company that specializes in building dynamic robots and software for human simulation.” Basically, they are engineering the robot apocalypse. Don’t believe me? They already have a human-like prototype and this running ‘cheetah’ robot that will run you down as you traverse the vast, grey, nano-bot ravaged wasteland of the future:

Impressed? Scared? Think they will remember to program these things with the laws of robotics? Let me know in the comments below.

That’s why the U.S. Army is warning soldiers about the dangers of geotagging.

The threat is pretty obvious. Not only could voluntarily sharing a location compromise a mission, but so much that’s done on a smartphone or tablet these days is geotagged, soliders could be sharing their locations without even knowing it.

“A deployed service member’s situational awareness includes the world of social media. If a Soldier uploads a photo taken on his or her smartphone to Facebook, they could broadcast the exact location of their unit,” said Steve Warren, deputy G2 for the Maneuver Center of Excellence.

“Today, in pretty much every single smartphone, there is built-in GPS,” Warren said. “For every picture you take with that phone, it will automatically embed the latitude and longitude within the photograph.”

In a post, the official site of the U.S. Army says that this has already happened. Back in 2007, as a new fleet of helicopters arrived at a base in Iraq, solider snapped some photos and out them online. Apparently, from those photos, enemies were able to single out the location and deliver a mortar strike that took out four AH-64 Apaches.

The Army is particularly concerned with Facebook – especially the new Timeline, which we all know, brings up all of your past Facebook information for the world to see. Users have to go back and manage their Timelines to make them ready for primetime.

“Some of those individuals have hundreds of ‘friends’ they may never have actually met in person, he explained. “By looking at someone’s map tab on Facebook, you can see everywhere they’ve tagged a location. You can see the restaurants they frequent, the gym they go to everyday, even the street they live on if they’re tagging photos of their home. Honestly, it’s pretty scary how much an acquaintance that becomes a Facebook ‘friend’ can find out about your routines and habits if you’re always tagging location to your posts,” said Staff Sgt. Dale Sweetname of the Online and Social Media Division.

The U.S. Army has some pretty in-depth social media guidelines, and they address what soldiers should do in terms of the geotagging issue. First off, they say that soldiers should never tag photos posted to Flickr or Picasa with locations, and they should refrain from using location-based social networking when deployed or during training. When engaged in operations, soldiers should just turn off the GPS function on their phones.

Facebook’s current timeline settings only go back to 1800, a seemingly arbitrary limit to set. The problem is not all “brands” were founded after 1800. The U.S. Army, for instance, was founded in 1775, during the American Revolution. Same for the Navy and Marine Corps.

At this time, this page only allows us to go back to 1800. However, we were ‘founded’ in 1775.

The Army’s Birthday: 14 June 1775

When the American Revolution broke out, the rebellious colonies did not possess an army in the modern sense. Rather, the revolutionaries fielded an amateur force of colonial troops, cobbled together from various New England militia companies. They had no unified chain of command, and although Artemas Ward of Massachusetts exercised authority by informal agreement, officers from other colonies were not obligated to obey his orders. The American volunteers were led, equipped, armed, paid for, and supported by the colonies from which they were raised.

In the spring of 1775, this “army” was about to confront British troops near Boston, Massachusetts. The revolutionaries had to re-organize their forces quickly if they were to stand a chance against Britain’s seasoned professionals. Recognizing the need to enlist the support of all of the American seaboard colonies, the Massachusetts Provincial Congress appealed to the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia to assume authority for the New England army. Reportedly, at John Adams’ request, Congress voted to “adopt” the Boston troops on June 14, although there is no written record of this decision. Also on this day, Congress resolved to form a committee “to bring in a draft of rules and regulations for the government of the Army,” and voted $2,000,000 to support the forces around Boston, and those at New York City. Moreover, Congress authorized the formation of ten companies of expert riflemen from Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, which were directed to march to Boston to support the New England militia.

George Washington received his appointment as commander-in-chief of the Continental Army the next day, and formally took command at Boston on July 3, 1775.

Aside from being somewhat unpatriotic, Facebook appears to be trying to rewrite history in other ways. The spirits company Captain Morgan tried to date its company to the birth of infamous pirate Captain Morgan. Guess what, he was now born in 1800.

By February he was already pillaging.

Brands are making due with the limitations by adding their own dates and history in text comments marked 1800. At this point they really don’t have a choice, Facebook will change all pages over to timeline at the end of March. If brand pages wait until the glitch is fixed, if it is fixed, they will have no time to update the information they want about their history.

The Hummingbird is designed to fly 2,500 nautical miles with endurance in excess of 24 hours and a payload of more than 300 pounds. The autonomously-flown A160 is 35 feet long with a 36-foot rotor diameter. It will fly at an estimated top speed of 140 knots at ceilings up to 30,000 feet, which is about 10,000 feet higher than conventional helicopters can fly today. Future missions for the A160 include reconnaissance, surveillance, target acquisition, communications relay and precision re-supply. The UAV uses the ARGUS-IS system which recently passed tests after being used on the UH-60 Blackhawk.

The ARGUS-IS (Autonomous Real-Time Ground Ubiquitous Surveillance Imaging System) sensor is the most potent in the Army’s arsenal. Also originally from DARPA and now built by BAE systems, the ARGUS-IS collects six petabytes of video every day. That’s 79.8 years of HD video every 24 hours. The three principal components of the ARGUS-IS are a 1.8 Gigapixels video sensor plus two processing subsystems, one in the air and the other located on the ground to keep up with the massive amount of video coming in.

Check out the short video from Boeing below: