Industry ready to pounce on embattled radio programs.

• Author: Beidel, Eric
• Position: Selling to the Army

After nearly two decades and billions of dollars spent, the Joint Tactical Radio System, once a grand plan to build do-it-all radios common to the military services, is in a state of flux.

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The program office has closed up shop and shifted responsibility to the Army, which will try to pick up the pieces and forge ahead with a coherent acquisition strategy. The problem is that nothing about JTRS up to this point has been easy, especially not in recent months.

Development of a ground mobile radio (GMR) has been cancelled in favor of seeking industry bids for a new mid-tier networking vehicular radio (MNVR). Officials also are starting from scratch with an airborne and maritime fixed station (AMF) program after nixing an initial effort to make radios for Apache helicopters and other aircraft.

Both those efforts are looking to the commercial market to deliver the goods rather than repeating lengthy and expensive in-house development programs. Sandwiched between the airborne and vehicle radios are two pieces of the JTRS puzzle designed to bring the individual soldier into the battlefield network. These handheld, manpack and small-form (HMS) items have generated most of the drama lately and also are prime targets for a growing commercial market that promises to deliver more for less, sooner.

"The commercial technology in this field is evolving so quickly you really can't spend eight years building a radio," said Dave Prater, vice president for networked communications at ITT Exelis, which has a product aimed at the rifleman radio effort and has teamed with Northrop Grumman on a bid for the new MNVR. "It's old before it hits the streets."

General Dynamics C4 Systems is the prime contractor for the backpack-sized, two-channel manpack radio and the handheld "rifleman radio," which aims to provide mobile, voice and data communications to soldiers on the front lines in much the same way information is exchanged over commercial cellular networks. General Dynamics has teamed with Thales Communications Inc. on the HMS program.

The Army has bought 19,000 rifleman radios, which work in tandem with smartphones to allow soldiers to communicate via voice and video and track their positions while on the move. The service ultimately wants to purchase 193,279 of them. A full-rate production contract will be up for grabs by General Dynamics, Thales and vendors outside the program of record, according to an acquisition decision memorandum...