The United States Air Force is to follow in the footsteps of commercial airlines, replacing onboard flight manuals with Apple's dominant iPad tablet, new reports have revealed.

With a number of commercial airlines moving to adopt Apple's iPad devices in place of heavy and complicated paper flight manuals, the US military is now said to be planning to buy up to 18,000 iPad devices for Air Force pilots.

Whilst Lt. Col. Glen Roberts of the US Air Force highlighted the military's cost cutting by announcing the AMC “is looking for a tablet device, not necessarily an iPad," a posting on the Official Business Meetings website stated the US military planned to buy "a minimum of 63 and a maximum of 18,000″ iPad 2 devices.

Having been previously approved by the Federal Aviation Administration, the military bound iPads are set to be introduced with immediate effect, replacing the physical flight bag for crews on C-5 Galaxy and C-17 Globemaster aircrafts.

Are you an Apple tablet owner? What has your iPad device replaced in your daily life? Let us know via the T3 Twitter and Facebook feeds.

The US Air Force had found a use for the iPad 2, here's our video of another 10 things you should do with the Apple tablet

For more Apple videos and all the latest tech video, head to the T3 Video Channel

Via: 9to5Mac