U.S. Army deploying nearly 10,000 rugged Getac Windows 10 tablets

By Dan Thorp-Lancaster
published

It looks like Windows 10 is headed into battle with the Global Combat Support System branch of the U.S. Army (GCSS-Army), which has ordered nearly 10,000 rugged tablets sporting the OS to be deployed. In particular, the GCSS-Army has turned to the Getac F110 G3 and its docking station, 9,783 of which will be deployed.

According to an announcement from Getac, the tablet will be used to replace some older equipment across active and reserve units, in addition to the National Guard:

After a thorough vetting process, GCSS-Army determined the Getac F110 G3 would be the best new rugged tablet to replace several aging and outdated Army management information systems across tactical logistics environments within the Army's Active and Reserve components as well as the National Guard.

Though its ruggedized shell is probably its most appealing feature, the F110 G3's built-in barcode scanner, which Getac says will be used to capture UID data, was also a big factor in GCSS-Army's decision. Some of the more typical features of the 11.6-inch tablet include 6th-generation Intel Core i5 or i7 processors, up to 1TB of SSD storage, and anywhere from 4GB to 16GB of RAM. Other features like a fingerprint scanner and Trusted Platform 2.0 Module, and Smart Card reader help to keep things secure.

Getac expects the full rollout of all 9,783 units to be completed by May 2017.

Dan Thorp-Lancaster
Dan Thorp-Lancaster

Dan Thorp-Lancaster is the former Editor-in-Chief of Windows Central. He began working with Windows Central, Android Central, and iMore as a news writer in 2014 and is obsessed with tech of all sorts. You can follow Dan on Twitter @DthorpL and Instagram @heyitsdtl. 

41 Comments
  • Great news for we loyal Microsoft fans
  • Why? Seriously, how does this enhance your Windows experience in any way?
  • More windows devices 👉🏼 more support from Microsoft 👉🏼 better OS
  • Also, Win10 is said to be the last Windows, everything you build for it will not go obsolete.
  • If you're part of the military that's currently on their older outdated systems, I would think this would enhance their Windows experience greatly.
  • This will. We're currently using a combination of DOS and Windows 7 in our logistics systems; but we're moving everything to Windows 10 going forward.
  • the overwhelming amount of Windows 7 still SLOWLY running on my recruiting station computers and MEPS and a handful Windows 8.1 tablets which the recruiters are struggling with. yes, the army needs something better thsn those..
  • Seriously, how does your usless troll comment enhance your Apple or Android experience in any way? If you go to an Apple/Android fan site, every single iPad sold, every single Android device deployed, they make sure to tell you because it is "proof" that Android/Apple is winning the war against the "evil" Microsoft. But now we have the US Army deploying Windows devices. Not for Angry Birds, not because they like seeing that Apple or Android logo, but for real work, work defending the country. And the Apple/Android fans are out whining and complaining about the news. Now scurry away to iMore or Android Central and the 7 of you on each of those sites can high-five each other, and celebrate your pathetic little comment that you think you scored big points with, but really you just proved how much of a troll you really are.
  • He's just sad the US army and big businesses are still using Windows. While IOS and Androids are just toys as consumption device for basic regular people.
  • Rock on for Microsoft :) best choice over ios and android for the battle field.
  • yeaah especially when you control a drone and then... BSOD happens or the PC restarts itself because of a stupid update  
  • And hopefully it'll be flying above your car at that time.  What self respecting, professional would allow any of their devices to update automatically without any action from them???
  • You have absolutely no idea of that which you speak.
  • Windows never does that.
  • Yeah, I've been experiencing BSOD quite a lot since I upgraded my Surface Pro 2 to Windows 10, worse than any earlier version of Windows I've ever used, even after a fresh OS install. It usually occurs on resume from sleep/hibernate, and it's always this meaningless "Kernal_Security_Check_Failure" stop code. Starting to think it has something to do with the Kodi app from the Windows Store, 'cause I only get a BSOD when that app is open on resume from Hibernate. When it's closed, my Surface Pro 2 resumes as expected. With Hibernation disable from power settings, if Kodi is left running on my system and it goes into sleep for a while, it shuts down my system, even though it's plugged in...so much for "Sandboxed apps can't harm your system". That said, withouth Kodi (which I'm 100% certain the military wouldn't need), I don't experience any BSODs with any of my loads of other applications running...
  • Now if they could only sell them some Windows 10 mobile phones...
  • Phones aren't large enough to use as a shield.
  • The DoD has already contracted Apple as the replacement for our Blackberries. We've been using iPhones for about 2 years now and that's unlikely to change unless the Surface Phone is capable of running Win32 apps in continuum and in the background. Even then it'll be years before they renegotiate the Apple contract.
  • Windows on ARM anyone?
  • Definately beats luggin' around an IBM 360 in a refrigerated trailer.
  • Happy windows 10 is growing every day
  • Happy windows 10 is growing
    every day
  • Great mobile workstations, the military would not use iOS or Android since it cannot run first class software that doesnt run on ARM. Probably the military run software that does signal processing and very advanced encryption routines ussing assembly language, like a Ferrari compared to a Beetle running javascript
  • Guess Apple didn't have an app for that. The iPad sure would have been pretty out in the field though.
  • Great news  
  • watch an oposing army uses the 0day exploit lol and crashes them all. 
  • I had to LOL at this. Like 10k devices is a big deal. Nowhere near the volume of a popular selling devices. Not sure why we care. Maybe Msft lost one battle, but they are losing the war....
  • How is this not good news? Windows 10 OS is being constantly deployed with businesses and governments. Any sale is a good sale.
  • Uh... Because were celebrating a few thousand in a battle of millions. Were celebrating rounding errors... I think MSFT will lose the OS market in the next 5-10 years. All they'll have are business apps that work on relevant mobile OSs like IOS and Android... Yeah, Continuum is neat but apple will invent that in a couple years and effectively market it. It's great that MSFT is getting full widows into a pocketable device, but 98% of those pockets are occupied by ios and android. No one will give up their phone for a widows phone and no one will carry two phones in their pockets.
  • Ignorance is bliss.
  • Half of the people that I know carry two phones in their pocket. One is a work phone (dual sim) and the other is their personal phone.
  • I carried two phones also Galaxy S6 Edge for work and Lumia 929 personal. I now have an iPhone for personal use but I'm looking for a replacement 929 since mine was lost or stolen.
  • http://1reddrop.com/2017/03/11/windows-10-installed-base-shows-strong-nu...
  • > in the next 5-10 years
    Only if iOS or Android can run Visual Studio, Unreal, Adobe stuff, 3dsMax, Havok, etc. Besides, both iOS and Android (and Mac) are not as keyboard-user-friendly as Windows.
  • You assume that iOS an Android meet the needs of everyone at every time. BlackBerry once did that. Where are they now? Clearly iOS and Android are not meeting the business needs of everyone and when MS gets their s*** together they can start to meet the needs of consumers as well. They really should be focusing on winning business contracts at this point. Defend their flag... and those of us on the consumer end can continue to give feedback as to how they can reach more of our peers over on the other OSs.
  • Lol, something is wrong with your outlook on Windows. I work at a hardware store, while I'm pursuing another degree. All pcs have been upgraded to W10. There are plenty more that has also. Even libraries around where i stay have updated to W10. Whatever numbers you're thinking about, you should add some zeroes.
  • GCSS-Army: http://gcss.army.mil/
    Support and logistics.
  • So it isn't as large as what the consumer sales to iOS and Android but it's a large organization that decided to go with my OS of choice. So... I care! It's a vote of confidence in Windows 10.
  • Yes they did it i know they were gonna I said something about using them in deployment.
  • Can Cortana target your contact list with a barrage of artillery fire?
  • GCSS-Army: http://gcss.army.mil/
    Support and logistics.