A rugged portable notebook for tactical applications
(by Conrad H. Blickenstorfer)

The DRS Scorpion is a substantial notebook for operation in hostile environments. It was initially designed and built for military use, bringing rugged computer technology to warfighters in planes, tanks and other combat and support vehicles.

The Scorpion uses an entirely Commercial-Off-The-Shelf internal architecture built around a 1.4GHz Intel Pentium M processor. Combined with TFT daylight-readable screens (either 12.1-inch SVGA transflective or 13.3-inch XGA transmissive), removable 20GB or larger hard drive and hot swappable lithium ion batteries, an optical drive, internal expansion, and plenty of interface ports, the Scorpion RBM provides flexible, reliable operation in the most extreme environments.

Since the Scorpion was specifically designed for rugged military applications, its environmental qualifications meet all the military-critical EMI and MIL-SPEC requirements. The Scorpion RBM and the similar Scorpion RDS are two of the four main rugged computers that support the U.K. BOWMAN program that brings vehicle-mounted rugged computers and displays to all radio-equipped U.K. Army (and some Air Force and Navy) vehicles and many dismounted troops for rapid and secure command-and-control communications, among other applications.

Note: If you're familiar with the Scorpion RBM but haven't checked its specs in a while, DRS upgraded the machine in late 2006 with a faster 1.4GHZ Intel Pentium M processor, increased maximum RAM to 2GB, and equipped the machine with a larger hard disk.

Note: as of 12/2011, the Scorpion RBM is still on the DRS site, though by now the specs are quite dated.