France's Thales wins key UK ‘robo-squaddie’ contract  Could be
worth £2 billion    • alert   • submit to reddit  Evaluating the
cost of a DDoS attack  French defence contractor Thales has been
awarded the £15 million contract for the assessment phase of the
UK's version of the digital battlefield, the FIST (Future
Integrated Soldier Technology) programme. Thales beat deadly
rival BAE Systems to the deal, which in total could be worth
something like £2 billion, and is actually somewhat broader-
ranging than its name might imply.  It's instructive to compare
FIST with the US digital battlefield vision we covered here
recently, because although they are ultimately about the same
thing, the philosophical approach is quite different, and we
think speaks volumes about differences in military doctrine. The
US is attempting to digitise the battlefield and portray it on
screen, with for example tanks becoming a sort of mobile office
and HQ moving all the counters around, whereas the Brits seem to
start more from a fixe