U.S. Air Force is testing Google Glass & building apps for battlefield use (exclusive)
Above: Airforce test dummy wearing Google Glass — The U.S. Air Force's “BATMAN” research team at Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio is beta-testing Google Glass for possible use on the battlefield.
Context & Ripple Effects
Google Glass has spent two years collecting institutional pilots since its first hardware demos in 2012 — a period when augmented-reality experts publicly flagged serious technical hurdles for the platform, and university researchers showed the camera could do real work like Duke's wearer-recognition app. The NYPD became the marquee public-sector tester in February 2014.
Now the Air Force joins that list from a different direction: its BATMAN research team at Wright Patterson Air Force Base isn't just wearing Glass but writing its own apps for battlefield scenarios. The story drew same-day pickups at eWeek, 9to5Google and Gigaom Research — a sign the defense angle travels further than consumer Glass coverage usually does.
First-order effects
- Google gains a military-grade validation point for a device whose consumer reception was uncertain, plus a customer building internal apps rather than waiting for an ecosystem.
- The BATMAN team's beta puts battlefield requirements — hands-free data, ruggedization, battery life — directly onto Google's development roadmap through real-world testing.
Second-order effects
- Other military research units now have a template for piloting wearable hardware without procurement cycles, following the NYPD's earlier civilian-beta playbook.
- Enterprise and government demand gives Glass developers a second market to build for, softening the platform's dependence on fickle consumer adoption.
Third-order effects
- If defense wearables follow the pattern of prior Air Force experiments — from Defcon recruiting to tablet trials — battlefield-tested consumer devices could become a standard channel through which commercial tech enters military use.
- Wearables' legitimacy increasingly rests on institutional pilots rather than retail sales, shifting the competitive battleground from consumer marketing to enterprise and government deployments.
The trend: Consumer wearables are finding their footing through government and enterprise pilots — police departments, universities, and now the Air Force — as institutional buyers absorb the risk that consumers won't.