Support: May 6, 2003

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: OneSAF (or One Semi-Automated Forces) is one of the U.S. Army's training wargames. It is played on a computer, and displays information the same way commanders would see it when actually in combat. OneSAF represents individual troops and vehicles and is mainly for battalion, company and platoon commanders. But over the last few years, army wargame developers have noted that some PDAs (Personal Digital Assistant), like the IPaq series, have sufficient computing power to run OneSAF. Since IPaq's can also communicate via wireless networks, a strictly unofficial effort got OneSAF onto an IPaq. The idea behind all this was that more and more officers, and troops, are taking PDAs into the filed with them. Officers have to keep a lot of the information about their units handy (supplies on hand, radio frequencies, passwords, todo list and so on) and PDAs are a convenient way to manage it all. Putting a wargame on the PDA, one that mimics a command and control system (PDA based) the army is already working on, seemed a good idea. Unfortunately, there wasn't money available to go any further with it. But at least everyone knows that it can be done. Given the success of battlefield Internet tools during the Iraq war, the PDA wargame will probably show up as another commanders tool in a few years.


 

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