Army's acquisition of battle network slowed down by red tape.

• Author: Erwin, Sandra I.

The Army's fast-track method of buying mobile networks for deployed soldiers could be in jeopardy as long as it remains bound by existing procurement regulations, government and industry sources said.

Under a new evaluation system that was launched a year ago, the Army is seeking to buy digital radios, smartphones, portable 3G and 4G networking systems and other wireless technology to equip its combat brigades. The goal is to compress a process that would normally take three to five years into a few months, so technologies don't become obsolete by the time they reach the battlefield.

The process, known as Network Integration Evaluation, or NIE, is the Army's answer to its decades-old frustration of failing to provide soldiers the latest and greatest communications systems from the consumer market-The first two NIE events occurred last summer and fall at training ranges in Fort Bliss, Texas, and White Sands Missile Range, N.M. The Army is about to kick off two more NIEs this year.

Hundreds of products have been evaluated, but the Army so far has only purchased systems that already existed--known as "programs of record"--and had been funded before NIE got started.

Suppliers of commercial technologies and traditional military IT vendors have enthusiastically endorsed the NIE as a venue that would offer soldiers who actually use the systems an opportunity to inform buying decisions.

Incumbent vendors and newcomers who have been chasing a share of the Army's $6 billion-a-year IT market are waiting to see whether the NIE will deliver on its promise to open the market to "emerging" technologies that are not programs of record.

But Army leaders who have been championing the NIE now worry that military procurement regulations and contracting rules will make the fast-track buying process much tougher than they had anticipated.

The number-one question about the NIE is: "What are we going to buy?" asked Richard Cozby, deputy director for systems of systems integration, at the office of Army acquisition, technology and logistics.

Thc Army is scheduled to equip a brigade in October with improved voice and data communications systems that will be selected based on the results of NIE tests.

Speaking to an audience of contractors at the Soldier Technology 2012 conference in. Arlington, Cozby acknowledged that the Defense Department's rules for funding, testing and acquiring equipment are anathema to the NIE's compressed schedule.

"A lot of things arc being done in parallel: requirements, budget, testing, fielding," Cozby said. "We are having to spend extra time explaining the process to senior DoD leaders and Congress."

One of the...