Crunch time: U.S. military works to ensure band-width for multibillion-dollar radio program

摘要

Now that U.S. military planners are getting ready to deploy the first of the new high-bandwidth Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) radios, communications managers are taking steps to ensure that U.S. forces deployed abroad will have access to the frequencies their radios will need. The expected bandwidth crunch is the latest challenge facing managers of the sprawling dollar4 billion program under which modernized radios would be installed in ships, aircraft and ground vehicles. Marines and infantry soldiers would carry versions as well. JTRS would allow U.S. forces to exchange voice, data and imagery over ad hoc, or mesh, radio networks. Individual radios would act as relays, giving American forces the ability to communicate around corners, mountains or other obstacles. The radios would be interoperable, because their signals, or waveforms, would be generated by software, instead of the physical characteristics of the radios. Troops could tune to a new waveform with the flip of a switch. Four years ago, critics considered the program unwieldy and overly expensive, and in 2005 the Pentagon streamlined the program by scaling back the number of waveforms and versions of the radios to be built. Since then, the services have had to buy more radios of existing designs to compensate for the JTRS delays.