RT News (Russian Times — a Russian State media source) covers ATAK, with a somewhat negative spin, based on the Draper news report:
A US lab is working on an Android application which would enable troops to call in airstrikes and control drones via a smartphone. Dubbed the Android Terminal Assault Kit (ATAK), the map-based prototype app is said to be designed to “save lives.”
With all the cutting-edge standalone technologies developed for the US military sector, one would hardly guess that the American SpecOp units are using small laptops for positioning targets and ordering air support on the ground.
More shocking still was the feedback that the developers of these laptops got from the troops: many would prefer to leave them at the base and use older hand-held GPS devices, as the little push-button tools were clumsy, emitted too much light at night, and once in a while crashed with Windows “Blue Screen of Death.”
This, as well as troops’ safety concerns, made Draper Laboratory of Cambridge, Massachusetts, begin work on a fundamentally different device for special operations, according to Emily Vincent of the lab’s TacDroid project.
