Connecting the Force

摘要

The US Army is supervising an acquisition that delivers new radios to itself, the US Navy, US Marine Corps (USMC) and US Air Force (USAF). The initiative falls under the purview of the army's Programme Executive Office for Command, Control and Tactical Communications (PEO C3T). Eight separate radios are being delivered, all of which will equip land forces manoeuvre units in these respective services. As an official US Department of Defence (DOD) document makes clear, new radios being delivered via the HMS programme provide Line-of-Sight (LoS) and Beyond LoS (BLoS) voice and data communications. LoS communications are provided using Very/Ultra High Frequency (V/UHF; 30 MHz - 3 GHz) links. BLoS communications are provided using Satellite Communications (SATCOM) and High Frequency (HF; 3-30MHz) links. The radios will carry both classified and unclassified traffic. HMS encompasses the delivery of handheld systems for dismounted troops and backpack radios for vehicles and platforms, dismounted troops and static bases. Production contract awards for the handheld radios were made in April 2015. Similar contracts for the backpack systems followed in February 2016. Details of the radios being delivered are presented in Figure-1. An Initial Operational Capability (IOC) for the Thales/General Dynamics AN/ PRC-154A Rifleman handheld radio was declared in 2012. The IOC for the General Dynamics AN/PRC-155 backpack transceiver was declared two years later. US DoD documents from 2019 state that 100,000 AN/PRC-163 Leader handheld radios will eventually be acquired. These will be joined by 21,579 AN/PRC-154A and 104,496 Combat Net Radio (CNR) single-channel systems. A total of 73,064 backpack radios of all types will be delivered, 65,622 of which will equip the army.