Army plans to buy battlefield radio that performed poorly in Pentagon tests
The Army is close to awarding General Dynamics Corp. a low rate production contract for a manpack radio to transmit broadband data on the battlefield, Nextgov has learned.
The service’s plans to buy the radio continue despite a July report by J. Michael Gilmore, director of operational test and evaluation for the Defense Department, deeming it operationally ineffective and unsuitable.
The Army anticipates fielding the Joint Tactical Radio System manpack radio to infantry brigades slated for deployment to Afghanistan in 2013, sources told Nextgov. Service officials plan to buy about 3,800 of the General Dynamics manpack radios at $78,000 each, sources said, for a total cost of $296.4 million.
The JTRS program, started in 1997, stands out as one of the Pentagon’s longest running and most troubled projects, with few radios fielded to date. It was designed to develop a family of radios that use software waveforms rather than hardware to define bandwidth, frequency, modulation, security and data rates. Its casualties to date include a refrigerator-size radio, developed by Boeing Co., whose cost peaked at $15.9 billion before the Pentagon canceled it in October 2011.
General Dynamics won a $295 million contract to develop the handheld and manpack JTRS radios in 2004 and this August, General Dynamics along with Thales Communications were awarded a contract valued at $53.9 million for 13,000 handheld radios, following successful real-world test by Army Rangers in Afghanistan.
JTRS radios need to be booted up like a personal computer to operate. Tests of the manpack in April and May at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., showed it took 20 to 25 minutes to start the radio, Gilmore said in a July 20 memo to Frank Kendall, undersecretary of Defense for acquisition, technology and logistics.
