UPDATE: The Department of Defense on Thursday said reports claiming it plans to end support for BlackBerry smartphones were “in error.”

Original Story:
The U.S. Department of Defense is ending its long-standing support for BlackBerry smartphones and is ordering hundreds of thousands of iPhones and other iOS-based devices from Apple to replace them, according to Electronista(Opens in a new window).

The DoD plans to order more than 650,000 iOS devices from Apple, including 210,000 iPhones, 120,000 iPads, 100,000 iPad minis, and 200,000 iPod touches, the tech blog reported Wednesday, citing unnamed “well-placed sources” at the Pentagon.

That order will be placed “following conclusion of the sequester,” which introduced federal spending cuts on March 1 as part of the U.S. government’s austerity policy, including a mandatory 11 percent budget cut for the DoD.

Electronista reported earlier this month(Opens in a new window) that the Pentagon had “decimated” its testing budget for BlackBerry 10, the newly released operating system for BlackBerry smartphones, in order to “save the DoD millions in procurement and personnel costs.”

After months of delays, struggling BlackBerry, formerly known as Research in Motion, introduced BlackBerry 10 in late January. This month, the Canadian smartphone maker is releasing a new handset running the mobile OS, the Z10, and plans to launch a second, the Q10, in April.

The company is banking on the new platform to turn around its fortunes, which have taken a hit in recent years as the smartphone maker lost market share to Apple and makers of Android-based smartphones. BlackBerry CEO Thorsten Heins even had some fighting words for his Cupertino rival this week, calling the iPhone “old news.”

But “old news” may have been what was missing from BlackBerry in DoD procurement officials’ eyes, according to Electronista. Older BlackBerry handsets aren’t upgradeable to BlackBerry 10. The iOS devices reportedly being ordered are “intended to replace nearly all the older BlackBerry devices incompatible with the new BlackBerry 10 software release.”

Unsurprisingly, the tech blog reported that of the some 470,000 BlackBerry devices in daily use at the DoD, “none … use the new BlackBerry 10 operating system.”

Should the DoD place an order with Apple for 650,000 iOS devices, “more than half are headed to the battlefield, afloat, and to associated support commands. Most of the rest will stay [at the Pentagon],” a source told Electronista.