Following a move made by several commercial airlines, the United States Air Force is now planing to purchase up to 18,000 iPads 2s to replace their pilots’ flight bags, which would otherwise be filled a heavy and massive heap of charts and maps.
Bloomberg reports (via MacRumors):
The U.S. Air Force awarded a $9.36 million contract to buy as many as 18,000 Apple Inc. (AAPL) iPad 2s in one of the military’s largest orders of computer tablets.
Air Mobility Command announced the award today to Executive Technology Inc., a Phoenix-based computer services company, Captain Kathleen Ferrero, a military spokeswoman, said in a telephone interview.
In additi0on to eliminating the need for heavy flight bags, the iPads will also help pilots be more efficient by providing faster and easier access to all of the documents they would normally have to sift through by hand.
