Ukraine's army is experimenting with using Steam Decks to remote-control gun turrets
The Steam Deck is a remarkably powerful piece of hardware, capable of doing all sorts of interesting things. But the Ukrainian military appears to have found one use that I'm pretty sure wasn't anticipated in any of Valve's design meetings: As a controller for a remote gun turret.
Photos of the Steam Deck purportedly being used to control a gun turret first turned up in mid-April, shared by TRO Media(opens in new tab), but they looked a little suspect: There was nothing to indicate that the Steam Deck in question was being used as part of the weapon, and not just for a spot of Vampire Survivors during a reload.
More recently, though, video from what appears to be the same event has turned up, and a Steam Deck is clearly being used to control the turret.
The purpose of a remotely-controlled turret is obvious: Get a gun on the front line without exposing the people using it to enemy fire. The auto-translated closed captioning in this separate YouTube(opens in new tab) video (which also shows the Steam Deck in use as a turret controller, but doesn't have as clear an angle on it) makes that point explicitly: «It removes a person from the line of fire, makes it possible to provide [fire] support without being a priority target and causing enemy fire on ourselves.» But why use a Steam Deck for such a thing?
It actually makes a lot of sense, according to Bellingcat researcher Aric Toler(opens in new tab), who helped uncover the leak of classified military documents on Discord in April.
«Steam Deck is pretty perfect when you think about it,» Toler told PC Gamer. «Totally native OS client, great controller you can use, touch screen, etc.
»It makes perfect sense for Steam Deck to be used, assuming the software is
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