ARMY READY TO UNPLUG RADIO PROJECT

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.

April 27th, 2005 | Comms, FCS Watch | Comments Off Both comments and pings are currently closed.