Adam Stone, Contributing Writer
maller, lighter, better battery power. This has long been the mantra of military radios. Now the Army is adding a new element to the mix: smarter.
As the Army moves to acquire the next round of its signature Rifleman and Manpack radios, those involved say the rapidly increasing power and intelligence of today's computer processors will distinguish the new generation from its predecessors.
"Computer processors are at the core of software-defined radio technology," according to information provided by Program Executive Office Command Control Communications-Tactical (PEO C3T). Improvements in processor size have helped bring down the Manpack weight from 19.5 to 16 pounds while also enabling radios to support 10 to 20 times higher data rates. In fact, most of today's major improvements — battery size, unit weight, performance metrics — can be traced back to improved processing muscle.
The Army's existing 5,326 Manpack radios were deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq. With its newly released request for proposals, the service seeks full-rate production of the Manpack by late in fiscal 2017, with authorization for up to 60,296 units.
A soldier carries a Manpack radio, which can be mounted inside tactical vehicles or carried dismounted, in his rucksack. The Manpack radio is the Army’s first two-channel, software-defined radio capable of supporting advanced and current force waveforms.
The new awards will likely go to multiple vendors that meet the technical and service requirements, on a five-year base plus a five-year option indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract.
A $4 billion Rifleman contract has already been awarded to vendors Harris and Thales, who have completed qualification testing and are moving toward operational tests. (Previously, General Dynamics and Thales had split production of Rifleman radios in a low-rate initial production contract, but General Dynamics opted not to take part in the full-rate production contract bid.)
At Harris, director of Army sales Jerry Adams predicted the next Rifleman will extend battery life from six hours to as much as 16 hours. That will cut down the number of batteries, which will lighten the load a soldier must carry. "It's really the processing" that makes it possible, Adams said.
To that end, the company and the Army have been taking their cues from industry. As PEO C3T spokesmen point out, today's iPhone has more performance capacity than a desktop of 10 years ago in an infinitely smaller package. Improved computing is doing the same thing for radios.
Thales confirms it is pursuing the same line. "We see efforts to engineer out cost through leveraging commercial components and technologies," said Todd Borkey, chief technology officer, Thales Defense and Security. "You can leverage commercial systems-on-a-chip technologies very effectively, versus one-off architectures that are much more bespoke. It's largely around reuse and getting more economies of scale."
Driven by momentum on the commercial side, improvements in processing capabilities have led directly to better software in an era defined by radios' emerging software-driven capabilities. In the next generation of radios, users on the tactical edge will have real-time awareness of exact soldier locations from anywhere on the globe, achieved by cross-banding tactical network data onto satellite constellation data pipes, Army sources said. This means leadership anywhere will be able to monitor and control tactical exercises across a broad geography.
While beefier processors and scaled-down batteries are to be the hallmarks of the next-generation radios, other large-scale changes may well shape the impact of these communications devices for those on the tactical edge.
Military planners have their eye on a network infrastructure that would go beyond the traditional building blocks. "The Army would love to have the speed and performance you can get over LTE, without having to put up a tower," Borkey said. In recognition of the shift toward more highly mobile operations, emerging radio configurations will move away from such heavy infrastructure, building instead upon mobile ad hoc networking technologies. This should add a heightened degree of flexibility to radio operations.
"There will be a heavy reliance on the expeditionary nature of these activities, with greater on-the-move abilities, as opposed to a reliance on infrastructure," Borkey said. This would enable broader coverage, including beyond line-of-sight reachback.
In addition to new thoughts about network design, the next-generation radio will boast a number of specific, practical features. Drawing from lessons learned in the field, the Army has asked that the new Rifleman give dismounted leaders better mapping, GPS and communications tools, for example.
Improved technologies in both the Harris and Thales Rifleman will also include a built-in display offering an easy view of battery life and network status, as well as simplified means to configure and program devices.
The Manpack will see improvements in the form of a more functional rucksack and better antenna survivability. "Lessons learned have driven improvements to range, power, SWAP, waveform performance and interoperability," according to PEO C3T.
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