The US Air Force is preparing a Request for Proposal (RFP) to acquire up to 18,000 tablet computers. The Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPad 2 is among the contenders, as is the PlayBook from Research in Motion Ltd. (NASDAQ: RIMM). Other tablets using the Android operating system from Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG) will also be considered.
The federal government has been slow to accept Apple products, but this could be changing as network security improves. Apple has submitted an application to the National Institutes of Standards and Technology to validate the company’s encryption scheme on the iPhone and the iPad.
The Air Force wants to reduce the amount of weight that flight crew member lug around, in similar fashion to United Continental Holdings Inc. (NYSE: UAL) which purchased 11,000 iPads last year. United expects to save 16 million sheets of paper and more than 300,000 gallons of fuel from the weight reduction.
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