In-flight entertainment system for military briefings

According to Flight International, the United Arab Emirates air force will equip three Airbus A330 Tanker Transport aircraft with an in-flight entertainment system for each seat. This is a result of using the same fit-out for the aircraft as used by the national carrier Etihad Airways. One consequence of this is that the entertainment system could be used for military briefings during the flight. The entertainment system would be able to provide briefings via the audio and video on demand system. The system has 10.4 inch touch-screens for economy seats.

Singapore airlines A380 airliners have OpenOffice.org's office software available from passenger seats, with plug in USB keybards. This would allow the passengers to watch powerpoint type presentations, as well as read Microsoft Word format word processing documents and spreadsheets. With th seats equipped with in-flight two way audio, this would provide the aircraft with limited capacity to be an in-flight command centre. The cost of this would be far lower than a custom military installation.

Hawkei Australian Light Protected Vehicle

Thales Australia has released images of a mock-up of its Hawkei Protected Mobility Vehicle proposed for the Australian Army under the LAND 121 Phase 4 program. This is a smaller vehicle than the Bushmaster and designed to replace un-armoured Landrovers.

The Hawkei is claimed to "... become a fully integrated node on the network centric battlefield" with C4I (Command, Control, Communications, Computers and Intelligence). However, apart from having sufficient electrical generating capacity, it is not clear how a vehicle could have C4I fundamental to the design. Computer and telecommunications change much faster than vehicle designs. If the Hawkei had C4I closely integrated, the design would be obsolete with eighteen months.