Army, Navy, Marines acquire new ruggedized tablet for mobile ops

DT Research’s DT301 ruggedized tables are built with a magnesium alloy to ensure an ability to withstand rigorous terrain, combat conditions and wet conditions.

The Army, Navy and Marines are acquiring a new lightweight, ruggedized tablet designed as both a touchscreen and keyboard computer able to withstand dust, water and rigorous terrain.

“Cloud infrastructure has been improving and workflow has been changing. This allows a service member to work in the field, gather what they need and go back to their station without having to transfer data. They can dock it at a desk and continue writing a report,” said Kevin Tsai, senior engineer with DT Research.

Earlier this year, the U.S. Navy acquired the tablets through a five-year deal with Patriot Inc.

The Navy is procuring the rugged tablets to deploy to personnel working at various shipyards for technical maintenance management, warehouse inventory control, field-testing and training, and other field data operations, a company statement said.
“This enables an ability to have your work with you at all times. Soldiers, sailors, airmen and marines can work on-the-fly,” said Joe Lewin, director of federal sales, DT Research.
The tablet-laptop, called the DT301C/S, is built with a magnesium alloy chassis for extra durability and reported to be able to withstand being dropped from at least four feet above the ground; the technology also seeks to combine higher-end i5 or i7 Intel processing power with a rugged device without a fan, DT Research developers said.

“You do not have to deal with water effects, dust or having the fan jam such that the device overheats,” Tsai said. “You can take a hose and hose it down.”

The computer, which meets NSA, Army, Navy and Air Force standards, is optimized with 800 nits of anti-glare brightness for outdoor missions.

The tablets have a built-in CAC reader for multiple security level control.  

A DT Research statement said the tablets deliver integrated hardware-software security and take full advantage of advanced Windows 10 security. This includes Device Guard enterprise hardware and software security features that only allow the tablet to run trusted applications with TPM 1.2 and 2.0 support.
The tablets include lock down features to protect against malicious users, hardware security options also include instant blackout, as well as automatic Bluetooth, RFID and WiFi disable functions that can be pre-configured to turn off all radio capabilities under certain conditions.