JTRS on the Skids

The cor­ner­stone of the Army Future Combat System has come under more scrutiny this month with a scathing arti­cle in National Defense mag­a­zine that shows a key com­mu­ni­ca­tions pro­gram is under­per­form­ing and tak­ing too long to bear fruit.

The Joint Tactical Radio System has been touted by Army plan­ners as a key ingre­di­ent in the FCS sys­tem of sys­tems, allow­ing sol­diers to com­mu­ni­cate across the net­works on a com­mon radio archi­tec­ture. The plan makes sense, and builds on rev­e­la­tions from the attacks on 9/​11 that showed var­i­ous gov­ern­ment and civil­ian agen­cies couldnt com­mu­ni­cate with each other because they used dis­tinct radio sys­tems and networks.

(From the Armys FCS pro­gram doc­u­ment)

The FCS (BCT) Family-​​of-​​Systems (FoS) are con­nected to the com­mand, con­trol, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, com­put­ers, intel­li­gence, sur­veil­lance and recon­nais­sance (C4ISR) net­work by a mul­ti­lay­ered trans­port layer with unprece­dented range, capac­ity and depend­abil­ity. The pri­mar­ily mobile trans­port layer pro­vides secure, reli­able access to infor­ma­tion sources over extended dis­tances and com­plex ter­rain. The net­work will sup­port advanced func­tion­al­i­ties such as inte­grated net­work man­age­ment, infor­ma­tion assur­ance and infor­ma­tion dis­sem­i­na­tion man­age­ment to ensure dis­sem­i­na­tion of crit­i­cal infor­ma­tion among sen­sors, proces­sors and warfight­ers both within, and exter­nal to the FCS (BCT)-equipped organization.

The FCS (BCT) trans­port layer does not rely on a large and sep­a­rate infra­struc­ture because it is pri­mar­ily embed­ded in the mobile plat­forms and moves with the com­bat for­ma­tions. This enables the com­mand, con­trol, com­mu­ni­ca­tions, com­put­ers, intel­li­gence, sur­veil­lance, and recon­nais­sance (C4ISR) net­work to pro­vide supe­rior Battle Command (BC) on the move to achieve offensive-​​oriented, high-​​tempo operations.

The FCS (BCT) trans­port layer is com­prised of sev­eral het­ero­ge­neous com­mu­ni­ca­tion sys­tems includ­ing the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) and Warfighter Information Network-​​Tactical (WIN-​​T). FCS (BCT) lever­ages all avail­able resources to pro­vide a robust, sur­viv­able, scal­able and reli­able het­ero­ge­neous com­mu­ni­ca­tions net­work that seam­lessly inte­grates ground, near ground, air­borne and space-​​borne assets for con­stant con­nec­tiv­ity and lay­ered redundancy.

The FCS (BCT) Network Management System will be uti­lized to man­age the entire FCS (BCT) net­work includ­ing radios with dif­fer­ent wave­forms, plat­form routers, and local area net­works (LANs), infor­ma­tion assur­ance ele­ments, and hosts. It pro­vides a full spec­trum of man­age­ment capa­bil­i­ties required dur­ing all mis­sion phases, includ­ing pre-​​mission plan­ning, rapid net­work con­fig­u­ra­tion upon deploy­ment in the area of oper­a­tions, mon­i­tor­ing the net­work dur­ing mis­sion exe­cu­tion and dynamic adap­ta­tion of net­work poli­cies in response to net­work per­for­mance and fail­ure conditions. 

The mil­i­tary has been try­ing for years to stan­dard­ize its radio com­mu­ni­ca­tions but has run up against some seri­ous tech­ni­cal and hard­ware bar­ri­ers that still keeps com­mon radios out of the troops hands. Remember sto­ries about field com­man­ders using Thuraya satel­lite phones and Aol Instant Messaging to pass infor­ma­tion across the bat­tle­field dur­ing the ground inva­sion of Iraq in 2003?

From National Defense

During the past four years, the ser­vices (mostly the Army) have spent nearly $4 bil­lion on new radios. By com­par­i­son, between 1998 and 2001, their radio pur­chases amounted to less than $1 bil­lion, accord­ing to Defense Department esti­mates. More than 60 per­cent of all radios pro­cured are either indi­vid­ual hand­held or squad-​​level manpack.

Before the war, the ser­vices were not allowed to pur­chase radios unless they obtained a JTRS waiver from the office of the assis­tant sec­re­tary of defense for net­works and infor­ma­tion inte­gra­tion. The pol­icy aimed to dis­cour­age pur­chases of non-​​JTRS radios.

But Army offi­cials com­plained that the waiver was a bureau­cratic bur­den that hin­dered their abil­ity to rapidly deliver radios to troops in Iraq. The Pentagon sub­se­quently agreed to sus­pend the waiver, although it recently approved a lim­ited pol­icy that only applies to single-​​channel hand­held radios.

Radio man­u­fac­tur­ers, who had envis­aged a finan­cial boon from JTRS con­tracts, grad­u­ally real­ized that they could make bet­ter prof­its by ramp­ing up pro­duc­tion of exist­ing radios in response to the mil­i­tarys surg­ing demand. Some con­trac­tors pri­vately admit they have soured on JTRS, espe­cially once they saw that their cus­tomers in the armed ser­vices had begun to lose con­fi­dence in the program. 

(Read the entire National Defense arti­cle HERE)

So, National Defense shows Pentagon offi­cials are start­ing to back off their force­ful endorse­ment of JTRS, allow­ing the ser­vices to pur­chase more mod­ern ver­sions of the radios they have now.

As the pro­gram con­tin­ues to lose sup­port across the mil­i­tary ser­vices, Defense Department offi­cials are engi­neer­ing a last-​​ditch effort to save what is increas­ingly a shaky pro­cure­ment plan. They also are back­ing away from ear­lier demands that the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps stop buy­ing their own service-​​unique radios in favor of a joint fam­ily of radios. 

Theyre bet­ter, for sure, but they still lock the ser­vices on their own com­mu­ni­ca­tions track keep­ing the dis­jointed comms prob­lem alive and rais­ing yet more ques­tions about the via­bil­ity of the FCS program.

(Gouge: NC)

– Christian

April 30th, 2007 | FCS Watch | 24886 Comments »http://defensetech.org/2007/04/30/jtrs-on-the-skids/JTRS+on+the+Skids2007-04-30+19%3A23%3A07Ward You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.