Radios in Combat
Congress recently recommended cutting funding for the
Army’s workhorse legacy radio, while urging more focus on
the still-developing interoperable system of the future.
By Michael Burnett
The ongoing debate over tactical ground and air communications technology marked a significant turning point in late 2007, when Congress recommended reduced funding for the Army’s workhorse legacy radio and urged more focus on the still-developing interoperable system of the future.
The FY 2008 defense authorization bill recommended a cut in requested funding for Army acquisition of Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio Systems (SINCGARS) units, while urging accelerated work on the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS).
The conference report on the spending bill stated the following: “The conferees are concerned that the acquisition of thousands more SINCGARS radios will undermine the Army’s investment in the JTRS program.”
The lawmakers’ action evoked strong responses from companies involved in manufacturing SINGCGARS and developing JTRS.
SINCGARS Reliance
By any standard, the Department of Defense relies heavily on SINCGARS radios to fulfill most of its mission needs. While DoD looks to JTRS as the future radio system for warfighters, it is important to note that SINCGARS has kept pace with the military’s needs through its own software-defined radio capabilities, argued Larry Williams, a technical director at ITT Communications Systems.
“The key to SINCGARS, which has been in the field since the early 1990s, is a continual technology refresh,” Williams stated. “It is in its fifth generation of technology right now. Inside the box, there is nothing that is the same as it used to be. Every four or five years, we do a complete technology refresh. The current version is a software programmable radio with all of the advanced digital signal processors that you would have in any modern state-of-the-art radio.”
SINCGARS has proven tremendously reliable to warfighters, Williams asserted, and that reliability is demonstrated in testing the radios undergo to meet DoD requirements. The tests subject the radios to pressure chambers, vibrations and shock. The radios experience few if any failures in the field.
“The field reliability is even better than we get in our control testing,” Williams declared.
In addition, the radios have evolved to support combat operations since their introduction in the early 1990s through the support of additional software waveforms and features.
“These include new interfaces to support command and control systems that none of the other radios have,” Williams remarked. “It includes things like radio-based combat identification. It has different types of data modes. All of these features have been developed to address very important operational needs. They are all contained within this overall SINCGARS package.”
Other platforms, such as JTRS, do not yet have these capabilities, offering only a voice capability, Williams contended, adding that no other program will develop to fulfill the range of functions fulfilled by SINCGARS in the very near future.
However, JTRS will continue to grow and will slowly augment SINCGARS in the field, Williams added. It will replace some SINCGARS radios, but not all of them and not quickly, he said.
“You should see some of the JTRS-type products coming in within the next five years,” Williams said, and ITT is prepared to assist in that transition. “We in fact are the developer of waveforms for the JTRS programs. We are developing the Soldier Radio Waveform, which is the most advanced waveform in the world for military operations.”
Late last year, ITT received $336 million for SINCGARS radios as part of a $2.5 billion, seven-year contract awarded in 2004.
“Any time you have a contract over $300 million, it’s significant,” Williams acknowledged. “From our ability to produce, that amount just keeps us moving at the same rate. Right now, we produce more than 5,000 SINGCARS radios a month on our production floor. This is to meet the demand that has been highlighted by the soldiers in Iraq.”
While SINCGARS has been fielded for some time, the tempo of operations in Iraq has truly demonstrated the level of need for Army radios, Williams said.
“Prior to this time, radios were relegated to primary combat vehicles such as tanks and some Humvees. They were not widespread,” Williams explained. “But with the change in operations we have seen in Iraq, where everyone must be in touch with everyone else. That demands that they have a reliable combat radio in every vehicle. We are seeing a movement by the Army to provide this very needed capability in a timely fashion. The radio has to be reliable; it has to be interoperable; and it has to go into any of the systems that the Army or Marine Corps are using.”
To meet the requirements of operations in Southwest Asia, ITT went from producing more than 1,000 radios a month five years ago to 5,000 radios today. The Army continues to evaluate how many radios it needs and how many to field to dismounted soldiers, leaving a question of how much longer that rate of production will be sustained.
Meanwhile, ITT also continues to support critical work in making the SINCGARS radios compatible with Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6). ITT is under contract to transition the SINCGARS Internet controller to a dual stack router capable of supporting both IPv6 and IPv4 in support of the DoD-wide transition to IPv6.
JTRS Capabilities
Companies eager to see DoD quickly embrace the capabilities of JTRS radios applauded Congress for support for the system, noting that JTRS radios are available for use today.
“JTRS, at its heart, represents an architecture,” said Kevin Kane, director of government business development for Harris RF. “JTRS has a software communications architecture. This is a pretty simplistic metaphor, but it’s kind of the Windows of the tactical communications world. The original concept of JTRS was that if everyone ran Windows on their radio, then we could be sure that everyone ran the same applications so we would ensure interoperability. And we would reduce costs as we wouldn’t have to develop various waveforms individually for each manufacturer’s respective radios.”
Harris has developed the handheld Falcon III AN/PRC-152(C), manpack Falcon III AN/PRC-117(G)(C), and vehicular Falcon III AN/VRC-110 to be fully compliant with JTRS requirements.
“We are doing our developments here on our funding, so it’s Harris’ risk. It’s not risk that is put back on the government. We believe having something available in the market today is a tremendous advantage to the Army. They didn’t have to run a development program to avail themselves of this technology and have it available today at a very critical juncture for them,” Kane noted.
The PRC-152 and PRC-117G are JTRS certified and offer programmable communications security. In addition, they offer functionality the SINCGARS radios do not, Kane said.
“A SINCGARS radio is single band; it only covers one part of the VHF frequency band. JTRS radios are multi-band in multi-mode so that one radio can do many things. It is not one radio per se. It’s one architecture that can be applied to many different radios that serve different missions,” Kane elaborated.
“The vision moving forward is to establish new waveforms that can enable things like battlefield networking. Part of the vision for JTRS is to establish the basic radios that can incorporate that networking. We are very proud that the PRC-117G is the first radio to be Type 1 certified that incorporates the capability for tactical networking in the radio. That is clearly the direction that DoD wants to go,” he continued.
The Harris radios are available for fielding immediately, and the Air Force recently purchased PRC-152 radios from Harris, placing several orders worth a total of $26 million for the PRC-152 handheld radios. The orders came as part of a $2.7 billion, indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract, known as the Consolidated Interim Single Channel Handheld Radio contract, awarded by the JTRS Joint Program Executive Office.
Meanwhile, the Marine Corps is fielding the vehicle-based VRC-110 in its Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles to replace SINCGARS radios.
“The Marine Corps is moving as rapidly as they can toward multi-band radios as trying to adopt JTRS technology as rapidly as they can. JTRS offers upgradeability as well as the multi-band, multi-mission nature of the radios,” Kane commented.
The high operational tempo of activity in Iraq and Afghanistan has prompted the Army to continue to field proven SINCGARS radios to support their communications needs, Kane acknowledged, and SINCGARS radios are likely to remain the backbone of Army battlefield communications for the next several years.
However, as DoD continues to add requirements for enhanced capabilities, the services are likely to accelerate their adoption of JTRS radios for widespread use.
“From our perspective as a commercial provider, we congratulate the JPEO JTRS in terms of finding avenues to allow a commercial provider to make solutions under the JTRS umbrella. It represents great vision on their part. Creating an environment of sustained competition is going to spark the innovation in JTRS to make the model sustainable,” Kane commented.
Software-Defined Issues
Looking at the military radio market from an outside perspective, meanwhile, some analysts anticipate that software-defined radio (SDR)—the fundamental technology underlying JTRS—will drive commercial innovations that will provide warfighters with increased radio capabilities while driving down prices of radio units through mass commercialization of the technology.
But Christopher Rezendes, an analyst at Venture Development Corp., cautioned that a number of differences still exist between the military and commercial markets—differences that will shrink over the next decade as the technology becomes more widely adopted. Rezendes points to JTRS as a platform that is driving software-defined radio systems.
“Five years ago, JTRS was the tap root from which SDR refined its economic life. I don’t think that’s quite as true over the next few years, but it will continue to be a very important place for suppliers and evaluators to learn and to co-invest,” Rezendes said.
Three key differences exist between military and commercial use of software defined radio, Rezendes explained. First and foremost, JTRS was designed to fulfill mission-critical applications, the likes of which are not necessarily required in the commercial market.
The second difference lies in frequency and spectrum allocation. “In the commercial markets, you would likely need an SDR implementation that could support less predictable and less reliable frequency hopping or support for different spectrum,” Rezendes said. “In the military, most of that need for support would be more clearly defined. You can have a tighter set of frequency or spectrum allocation requirements in your definition in the military or defense side, but it’s not likely you could do that in the commercial side.”
The third major difference is a matter of economics. “Mobile and wireless communications systems that are Pentagon-driven tend to have a higher price per unit and price per user cost of acquisition and ownership versus those in the commercial space,” the analyst observed.
Which is exactly why the DoD is turning to commercial technologies when standing up JTRS implementations, as using COTS technologies helps to keep costs down. DoD can use the flexibility of JTRS to save even more money, Rezendes contended.
“Our expectation is that the existing acute differences between military and commercial will shrink over the next decade,” he added. “We believe there are significant opportunities to improve the reliability, the performance, and the total cost of development and ownership profiles of a number of mobile and wireless systems in commercial and military spaces by looking at partial or by looking at targeted SDR implementations and not looking at an entire ideal SDR implementation. Looking at SDR as a toolkit or an architectural approach versus a specifically defined specification to be applied whole makes more sense for everybody.” ♦
