With airline companies starting to turn to the iPad 2 in order to reduce the weight that comes with flight bags, bags that contain big and heavy documentation that pilots are expected to bring with them on every flight, we guess it wasn’t really a stretch of the imagination to think that the air force would eventually turn to the iPad 2 as well, but it looks like that idea may have been shot down.The US Air Force Special Operations Command had originally planned to to use the iPads to replace the flight bags used by pilots, but it seems that they have abruptly cancelled the order for 2,861 iPad 2s without any particular reason. However some are speculating that the reason behind the order cancellation could be due to the software they were planning to use to read the documents, GoodReader.
According to reports, the Russian developed app was said to be the reason the AFSOC decided not to go ahead with the iPad orders, and according to Michael McCarthy, director of the Army’s smartphone project, Connecting Soldiers to Digital Applications, who told Nextgov that “he would not use software developed in Russia because he would not want to expose end users to potential risk.”
Either way we have to wonder if the AFSOC’s decision will affect the Air Force’s Air Mobility Command’s decision to buy 18,000 iPad 2s.
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