Written BY: Pooja. Thakkar

The US Army has selected Android to power the smartphones for the soldier. The idea here is to use smartphone technology to keep soldiers connected and in constant contact with monitoring personnel at military bases. Even though the program isn’t fully baked yet, they have settled on one thing: Google Android is the way to go.

The program, called the Joint Battle Command-Platform, is a project between MITRE and the US Army to develop the smartphones that will eventually be strapped to every soldier’s hip.

The soldiers may not be able to play Angry Birds on the smartphone but the phone would act as a tiny, portable computer and communications device. The device will only run apps that the Army approves and develops. Among those proposed apps are a mapping suite that will give soldiers situational awareness like where the enemy is and where friendly forces are. The suite would also allow commanders to track where their forces are on the battlefield.

The platform also allows for so-called “critical messaging,” which will allow commanders and forces in operation areas to exchange messages quickly and silently. There’s still debate and discussion around how the Army will keep the environment secure, and how the system will work in environments with no infrastructure for connectivity, but the project is still in its early stages.

The goal of the project is to develop a mobile platform using commercially available technology that the Army can extend with applications. So far, it looks like Android is the optimal choice for a platform that will work consistently with different hardware components, but is also opens enough to give them flexibility when developing applications. No one’s sure what the product of the program will eventually look like, but the Army expects to release its development kit, called the Mobile/Handheld Computing Environment, in July to programmers and partners