U.S. Army Looks To Apple For Hardware

Washington (dbtechno) - The Army has been mainly focused on the use of IBM compatible computers for its military and support computer usage. Much of this has been due to compatibility issues; much of the Apple Computer Company hardware has not been compatible with U.S. Army uses or equipment.

This is slowly starting to change. According to former Apple employee Jonathan Broskey, the Apple Mac computer running the Apple version of Unix is more stable, and more secure than IBM compatible computers.

“We are adding Apple Mac computers to our arsenal as part of an effort to make our networks more difficult to hack into,” stated Lieutenant Colonel C.J. Wallington. Lieutenant Col. Wallington is a division Chief for the Army in its Enterprise Network Information Systems.

“By making our networks more heterogeneous we believe hackers wont have such an easy time,” stated Wallington. The Army has had as a stated goal the intent to broaden and diversify its hardware since 2005. Army General Steve Boutelle stated back in 2005 that the Army should make its base of vendors more broad, to use more types of hardware to help harden Army information technology defense.

But up to now only a mere trickle of Apple Mac computers have made it into Army usage.

Twice a year the U.S. Army normally purchases computers, and they normally buy only a mere 1,000 Apple Mac computers, a drop in the bucket in the massive Army budget. Part of the issue has been incompatibility with the Army’s Common Access Cards. These cards are a security feature used by the Army, and have not run on Apple Computers.

The Army has announced that beginning in early 2008 that software revisions will allow the Common Access Cards to work on Apple Computers. “There is evidence that some of the Apple hardware such as the Xserve servers, can withstand attacks and attempts at hacking,” said Colonel Wallington. “We want to try and explore this ability further,” said Wallington.