The Army’s mas­sive mod­ern­iza­tion project, Future Combat Systems, isn’t just one pro­gram. It’s hun­dreds of inter­lock­ing, inter­wo­ven efforts to update armor, uni­forms, logis­tics, med­ical care, and much, much more. A few key threads hold the whole tapes­try together. And one of them is rapidly com­ing undone.
Without com­mu­ni­ca­tions — specif­i­cally, with­out the Joint Tactical Radio System, or “Jitters” — many of FCS’ most inno­v­a­tive efforts just won’t work. FCS is an attempt to turn the Army into a force that takes out oppo­nents with ultra-​​precise attacks and almost Godlike knowl­edge of the bat­tle­field instead of with over­whelm­ing fire­power. To make this nim­bly lethal dream come true, the Army needs almost-​​instant information-​​sharing, both between sol­diers and with FCS’ new fleet of robots. It needs Jitters.
Right now, the Army isn’t get­ting what it needs. Jitters is flail­ing, badly. As we noted the other day, the Army has put one of the program’s main con­trac­tors, Boeing, on notice that it could can­cel one com­po­nent, or “clus­ter,” of Jitters in a month.
Winds of Change offers today some stel­lar back­ground on the pro­gram — what Jitters does, the prob­lems it faces, and what might hap­pen next. And it the site’s com­ments sec­tion, a Jitters engi­neer weighs in on how the pro­gram got so tan­gled up. Good stuff.
THERE’S MORE: Meanwhile, Inside Defense reports, the Army is start­ing to look around for alter­na­tives to Jitters.
The Army’s next-​​gen set of rock­ets is called the Non-​​Line of Sight Launch System (NLOS-​​LS). It’s sup­posed to rely on Jitters’ “Cluster Five” to direct its assaults. But, like Boeing’s com­po­nent of the radio sys­tem, Cluster Five “has hit its own pro­gram snags,” says Inside Defense. As a result, the Army is con­sid­er­ing the pos­si­ble use of sur­ro­gate systems.

NLOS-​​LS is made up of three key com­po­nents: the Precision Attack Munition, a direct-​​attack mis­sile that can autonomously acquire a tar­get; the Loitering Attack Munition, which is being designed to fly to a tar­get up to 70 km away and loi­ter above it for up to 30 min­utes before strik­ing; and the Container Launch Unit, the box that stores, com­mands and fires the mis­siles.
The CLU, which offi­cials call the heart and soul of the pro­gram because it con­tains the infor­ma­tion that will tell the PAM where to go, depends on [Jitters].
The num­ber one risk to the NLOS-​​LS pro­gram cur­rently is the net­work, said Ric Magness, pres­i­dent of NetFires LLC, a joint ven­ture between Lockheed Martin and Raytheon estab­lished to build NLOS-​​LS.
NLOS-​​LS is sup­posed to rely on a future soft­ware pro­gram­ma­ble radio called the Joint Tactical Radio Systems Cluster Five, but that pro­gram has hit its own pro­gram snags. As a result, the Army is con­sid­er­ing the pos­si­ble use of a sur­ro­gate for the PAM and the CLU.
According to a Government Accountability Office report, JTRS — designed to trans­mit voice, video and data — was put on a sys­tem devel­op­ment and demon­stra­tion path with imma­ture tech­nolo­gies and few well-​​defined require­ments. The pro­gram faces tech­ni­cal chal­lenges because of its size, weight, power and data pro­cess­ing require­ments. Its early devel­op­ment was delayed because of a con­tract­ing dispute.

Consequently, the report said, “the Cluster 5 radios are not likely to be avail­able” for the ini­tial roll-​​out of FCS.” And that includes the new rocket sys­tem.
AND MORE: Winds’ sis­ter site, Defense Industry Daily, is track­ing the crim­i­nal inves­ti­ga­tion into the dis­func­tional search and res­cue radios L-​​3 Communications has built for the Army.

It’s been nearly three years since Boeing won an Army con­tract to develop the next gen­er­a­tion of mil­i­tary radios. But nei­ther the com­pany nor its gov­ern­ment part­ners have any idea how many bil­lions it’s going to cost, in the end, to build the Joint Tactical Radio System — “Jitters” for short. (I’ve seen esti­mates as low as $5 bil­lion, and as high as $15 bil­lion. That’s a major spread.)
On Monday, the Army told Boeing in a let­ter than the mega-​​corporation had 30 days to give a good rea­son do to some ’splain­ing about why they let Jitters get so screwed up. The note also gave out­siders a peek into just how wrong Jitters has gone.
“It is impos­si­ble to pre­dict with any con­fi­dence what the over­all pro­gram will cost or the asso­ci­ated sched­ule,” Defense Daily quotes the let­ter as say­ing. “Further, the gov­ern­ment has not seen suf­fi­cient evi­dence of the con­trac­tor teams under­stand­ing of the scale of inte­gra­tion required for [Jitters’ first phase] to ulti­mately achieve the pro­gram require­ments. Nor has the indus­try team dis­played suf­fi­cient abil­ity to esti­mate a cost and sched­ule base­line and rig­or­ously man­age to that base­line.“
As noted ear­lier, Jitters is not some minor exper­i­ment. It’s a cor­ner­stone to the Army’s mod­ern­iza­tion plans. Without it, sol­diers are stuck using a jury-​​rigged col­lec­tion of radios to talk. Figuring out how much the damn things are going to cost seems like a most basic of first steps. Three years into the pro­gram, it shouldn’t be that hard to take.

Boeing has a whole lot more to worry about today than its weak earn­ings this quar­ter. Another giant Boeing defense con­tract is in deep, deep trou­ble.
First, the com­pany came under fire for its shady, $23.5 bil­lion deal to lease tankers to the Air Force — and fleece $5.6 bil­lion from tax­pay­ers. Then, pro­jected costs for the its hulk­ing Army mod­ern­iza­tion effort, Future Combat Systems, grew from $92 bil­lion to a pos­si­ble $450 bil­lion (all while oper­at­ing under some quirky pur­chas­ing rules that kept gov­ern­ment audi­tors from get­ting too nosy).
Now, Inside Defense reports, “the Army has put Boeing on notice that within 30 days, the gov­ern­ment could ter­mi­nate” the company’s $15 bil­lion con­tract to replace 750,000 old-​​school radios with software-​​based mod­els.
The Army stopped work on the Joint Tactical Radio System (“Jitters”) back in January — partly because of tech­ni­cal screw-​​ups, partly because of trou­ble get­ting the National Security Agency to sign off on the encryp­tion algo­rithms.
“The gov­ern­ment is also con­cerned that the con­trac­tor won’t be able to pro­duce a radio that meets the Army’s require­ments for pro­cess­ing, heat dis­per­sion, size, weight and power. In addi­tion, the soft­ware remains imma­ture, and the con­trac­tor lacks proper con­trols,” Inside Defense says.
For all these rea­sons, Boeing now has 30 days to come up with a rea­son why the Army should not pull the plug on the Jitters con­tract.
If that hap­pens, it won’t just be a cou­ple of Boeing execs who suf­fer the con­se­quences. Soldiers today need a back­pack full of radios to talk to their com­man­ders and com­rades. Jitters was sup­posed to be the way to reduce that load, and get a sin­gle com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tem for G.I.s, marines, sailors, and air­men. But thanks to another blown defense con­tract, it looks like they’re still going to be forced to carry that bur­den.
THERE’S MORE: The Washington Post’s take is here.