Challenging JTRS: U.S. Army wants to test lower-cost radio technology

摘要

Radios carried by ground troops cost thousands of dollars each, a fact that is an obstacle to the U.S. military's determination to push intelligence to more troops and collect more intelligence from them. In a squad of 10 soldiers, only the squad leader and perhaps a couple other troops typically have radios. The multibillion dollar U.S. radio modernization program, the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS), is not expected to solve this problem. The JTRS team is producing a vast series of radios that will outperform today's devices by linking the services in an interoperable Internet Protocol network that will not come cheaply. Radio suppliers are itching to show they can outperform JTRS on cost, and in September one of the contenders will get its chance. A team of Cobham Sensor Systems, a U.S. unit of Cobham plc in Wimborne, England, and Raytheon's BBN Technologies plans to test a network of 150 prototype radios in an experiment with the U.S. Army. The radios were designed to meet a target price of dollar500 each set by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) using a hypothetical procurement of 100,000 radios.