The Department of Defence this week has claimed that Australia’s Defence Force was being beaten in Afghanistan because enemies were accessing location and security information via their iPhones.

At the Australian Computer Society (ACS) Canberra Branch conference held on March 25, chief technology officer (CTO) Matt Yannopoilos said that the "bad guys" in Afghanistan were making much better use of the data that is available to them by "using iPhones and applications — and multiple SIM cards — and going much faster than we are". This admission comes despite the fact that the Defence Force has a lot more information available than those from the war-torn country.

"Information is what is the thing to sort out in a modern warfare," said Yannopoilos. "It's less about how much lead you can rain down on somebody and more about: Do you know where they are? Do you know what they are doing? And how do you get that information to your forces?"

Currently, Australian Defence has around 4500 applications that store data, and a host of data ‘warehouses’ keeping information. This information comes from sources including ships, aeroplanes, radars and sensors, said Yannopoilos.

"Defence is one almighty information collection machine. It generates more info than I've ever seen,"

However, it seems as though the Defence information is kind of stuck in all of these warehouses of information, separated in such a way that most of it does not get used unless somebody specifically goes to look for it. Defence hopes that in the futures it will be able to have data that is not separated into such specific sections, so that it can be used by other applications when needed.

According to Yannopoilos, changing the way the information is stored is the best way technology help our troops. "It's something we've got to do, otherwise we're not going to realise our network-centric objectives, and we're not going to realise the information superiority that we have."

Yannopoilos also said that in the future, Defence hopes to be able to develop applications quickly to suit combat needs. He was quick to point out however that while it can take only two weeks to create an iPhone application, developing a Defence application can take two years.