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• Soldiers heading off to war won’t have to leave their smart phones behind. General Dynamics is developing a new version of the battlefield smart phone. It features a highly sensitive GPS, a touch screen and the ability to connect door kickers to the tactical network. General Dynamics hopes to supply these phones to every dismounted soldier. DoD Buzz reports that General Dynamics isn’t the only company developing military style smartphones. The Army has been testing a mix of 200 iPhones and other smartphones at several months. But there is a draw-back to the smartphones: the $1000 dollar price tag.
• Five minutes counts. That’s the lesson the US Aerospace learned when their bid for the Air Force KC-135 replacement competition was minutes late and not counted. The bid was due at 2 p.m. on August 2nd, the Aerospace bid arrived at 2:05. The Pentagon received the other two competing bids from Boeing and EADS on time. Bids for the KC-X competition are estimated to be worth about $35 billion for 179 tankers. Aviation Week reports both EADS and Boeing said their proposals were more than 8,000 pages in length. The Pentagon has taken some heat from the strict deadline enforcement, but Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell says his is not a high school homework assignment. Deadlines count here.” Aerospace has filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office saying the conduct of the Air Force was unreasonable.

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