Hacker News Reader

Most likely a beacon for mines and IEDs

Was a pretty common argument against "smart passports" doesn't matter if the stored data is encrypted, just matters that a signal is detected from a first world target in range of the mine/IED.

It also had me imagine a far future scenario where soldiers get too close to an enemy and accidentally recharge the enemy's depleted railgun.

Amusing scenario however don't expect it to be a significant risk - any wireless system would most probably perform negotiations before beaming out any significant amount of power. You want that to avoid damaging sensitive electronics, overheating a random chunk of metal, or plainly wasting energy.

Even the good old Qi wireless charging standard does negotiations, tho those aren't secured by any means.

It's probably easier to just have some sort of magsafe-like connector for power and data inside the vehicle. Charge the batteries with something like USB-PD to get the most out of the time a soldier might be stationary in the vehicle. Use the data connection to allow everyone's communications to go through the vehicle radio.