Army's Future Tactical Net Apt for High-Speed Combat.

The Army will be spending at least $6 billion during the next 15 to 20 years to replace its outdated communications networks that link brigades to echelons above corps and national authorities.

The existing system--the mobile subscriber equipment tri-service tactical (MSE-Tritac)--is not adequate to meet the Army's future needs, said officials, because it's nor mobile enough and relies on antiquated information technology.

The system that will replace the 25-year-old MSE-Tritac, additionally, will reach farther down in the chain of command, to battalion level. That is an important capability, officials said, because the Army wants to use communications technologies to streamline its command structure.

Next January the Army plans to release a request for industry proposals for the so-called Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T). Two contractor teams would be selected in late 2002 to pursue a three-year development effort. A single contractor will be chosen in 2005 rot me production or win- 1. The Army expects the system to be in operation by 2008.

If it stays on schedule, WIN-T would completely replace MSE by 2020. The Army fielded 4,500 MSE systems worldwide between 1987 and 1993. Its expected lifespan was 15 years.

In a nutshell, WIN-T is about "high-bandwidth communications on the move," said Maj. Gen. Steven W. Boutelle, the Arm/s director of programs and architecture, for command, control, communications and computers. Previously, Boutelle was the program executive officer for command, control and computer systems. That office is responsible for the WIN-T program.

With MSE-Tritac, "We reached a point of diminishing returns," Bouteile said in an interview. Radios can be replaced, but the reality is that, "MSE was designed for fixed operations," Boutelle said. "It is not mobile enough, it is too structured, does not have the capacity for the new technologies."

That is a problem for an Army that wants to be more mobile and less dependent on hard wiring for battlefield communications.

With WIN-T, said Boutelle, the Army will be able to rake advantage of modern information technologies that are widely available to civilians, such as streaming video, high-resolution graphics, overhead imagery and web-based logistics.

The Army has been working for several years on the development of "tactical internets" for its so-called digitized brigades. In a tactical internet, vehicles are equipped with computers that display a common tactical picture, and commanders can see the location of the forces in real time. That technology, said Boutelle, "works very well at the lowest level--in individual vehicles, squads, platoons, companies, battalions." It is the same technology that allows a taxi company dispatcher to track the location of each vehicle, so he can send the cab closest to the person requesting one. "The dispatcher has a map just like we do," said Boutelle. "What we are doing has been done commercially."

The Army's lower tactical internet primarily is composed of voice and data radios connected to each other. WIN-T would be the "upper tactical internet," a high-bandwidth mobile system for voice, video and data exchange.

The lower-level networks do not cover enough territory, which limits the Army's ability to expand its area of responsibility, explained Boutelle. "As you stress the [tactical] internet across the surface of the earth, especially in the mountains," communications signals get fractured. In mountainous areas, such as the Balkans, the only way to get around that problem is to install relay packages on mountaintops, unmanned aircraft or satellites. With WIN-T, he said, those systems would be tied together and connected to the brigade, division, the joint commanders and the national authorities. That requires communications systems with much longer range, most likely a combination of satellite and terrestrial technologies, said Boutelle.

The area of responsibility for an Army division is 120x200 km. By comparison, during the Civil War, the Army would put a brigade's worth of soldiers in an area 200 meters long.

At the National Training Center today, said Boutelle, a brigade covers an area that a division covered five years ago.

Unlike most other Army acquisition programs, WIN-T will be based on commercial technologies. Contractors will be asked to design the system and propose commercially-based architectures for command, control, communications and data processing. "We are asking them to address battalion communications all the way to echelons above corps," said Boutelle. The networks will have to operate while the battalions are on the move, in environments where there is no line of sight. The key to the success of this program, he said, is to "buy systems--in an architecture--that don't get obsolete by the time you deliver them."

In WIN-T, he said, "everything that gets off the ground should be considered a relay." That includes unmanned aircraft, aerosrar balloons, other air-breathing platforms, lower orbit, medium and geo-stationary satellites. "Industry should recommend the optimum solution," said Boutelle. "It needs to be a mix."

As WIN-T comes along, he added, "we will see ABCS evolve." The Army Battle Command Systems (ABCS) is a collection of commandand-control software programs that provide mission planners access to sources of battlefield information, including, maneuver, logistics, fire support, combat services support, air defense, intelligence, electronic warfare, terrain and weather.

"ABCS has moved from heavy workstations to light workstations, to commercial notebook computers," said Boutelle. "It will continue to get smaller and faster."

The technologies in WIN-T are "key for transformation," said Boutelle. Transformation for the Army means being able to deploy quickly and to communicate seamlessly with the other services. "WIN-T is the Army component of the global information grid," he said.

Satellite Communications

One of the most challenging technologies that the Army wants in WIN-T is mobile satellite communications systems.

"We don't have wireless on the move at high data rare," said Louis Marquer, director of the Army's Research, Development and Engineering Center, at Fort Monmouth, NJ.

The Army has large satellite terminals, fixed installations that provide wideband capabilities. There are also local fiber-optic networks. "The challenge we have is the 200 km connection between the fiber and the deployed force," Marquet said in an interview. In the future, he said, "our force must be mobile and the information [must] flow on the move, without having to stop to set up antennas."

Like Boutelle, Marquet promotes the concept of a ground network that includes airborne communications relays, such as unmanned aircraft. Satellites alone are not the answer, he explained, because they have a limited capability and are vulnerable to jamming and anti-satellite attacks. "The answer is a network of communication relays, based on UAVs."

The tactical internet that the Army has in place today is a network of radios and computers mounted on ground vehicles. It does not include UAVs. To get around elevated hills, the Army has to install relay stations on mountaintops. The upshot, said Marquer, is that you may not own the mountaintops.... To be movable, you don't want to have to set up an installation on the side of the mountain."

Marquet would like to see the WIN-T program push the development of electronic steerable antennas, a technology that the Army does not have, because it's too expensive. "We need steerable antennas that are dynamically, rapidly controlled, to direct the energy in a given direction," said Marquet.

His office currently oversees a program to develop Internet protocols for moving networks. Such protocols, said Marquer, "will be necessary for WINT." Protocols address, for example, user authentication, data rates and network security.

The program is called Mosaic (multifunctional on-the-move secure adaptive integrated communications). In 2004, the program will seek to demonstrate a mobile network with quality of service.

Internet protocol quality-of-service mechanisms help overcome problems such as jamming and network mobility, said Ken A. Peterman, marketing director at Rockwell Collins Government Systems. The company received a contract under the Mosaic program to work on these technologies.

ITT Industries' communications division also is working on an "advanced network test bed" for the Mosaic program, said Stan Griswold Jr., from ITT. "We demonstrated a network of 10,000 nodes," he told National Defense.

Both the WIN-T and the Mosaic programs will contribute to the development of the Army's Future Combat System (FCS), said Marquer. This next-generation vehicle has not been designed yet, but the Army already has said it wants every platform to be part of a high-bandwidth digital network.

"There is going to be an interesting interface between WIN-T and FCS," Marquet said. The battalion is likely to become the basic maneuver unit for the FCS, so WIN-T will be the communications network

So far, three prime contractors have emerged as strong players in the WIN-T competition. TRW Inc. leads a team of companies that includes ITT Industries, L-3 Communications, Qualcomm and Raytheon.

Another competitor will be Lockheed Martin Mission Systems, which has been working on a WIN-T proposal for several months, said Ed Shanahan, the company's director of Army communications.

The Army, said Shanahan, "has gone a long way in allowing industry to shape what this thing is going to look like. They have not been very prescriptive." Lockheed Martin still is in negotiations with potential partners. One of the technologies that the company has been promoting for WIN-T is a so-called electronic tactical operations center (E-TOC), a piece of software that provides access to the ABCS from small PCs or handheld computers. "We need to get information to the soldier level," said Shanahan.

Competing as a WIN-T prime contractor against TRW and Lockheed will be General Dynamics Communications Systems. A company spokeswoman declined to provide details on subcontractor or teaming arrangements.

Other companies that could join the fray--but have not announced their plans--are Boeing Government Information and Communications Systems and Northrop Grumman's Electronic Systems sector.

There could be significant realignment of industry teams between now and the January RFP, said Peterman, from Rockwell Collins. "As the teams reform, we expect to be a strong participant," he said.

Thales Communications, Inc. also expects to be involved in WIN-T, said Felix J. Boccadoro, the company's director of business development. WIN-T, he said, will require a handheld radio with top-secret encryption. "This is our specialty, so you will most likely see us on one or more of the teams for WIN-T."

Among the Pentagon programs labeled "transformational" by the Bush administration is a multi-service radio system that, unlike most military radios today, would allow all branches of the military to communicate with each other effortlessly.

The Defense Department's budget request for the Joint Tactical Radio System increased from $90 Billion in fiscal 2001 to $186 million in 2002. That is; only a small down-payment on what eventually could be a $3 billion investment in 260,000 radios that would replace the 750,000 radios in existence today--and would consolidate about 30 different types of radios to a single standard.

To prevent the further proliferation of service-unique radios, the Office of the Defense Secretary mandated that the services obtain a special waiver to purchase any non-JTRS radios.

The U.S. Army views JTRS as a comerstone of its future tactical communications. Maj. Gen. Steven W. Boutelle, the Army's director of programs and architecture, for command, control, communications and computers, said that WIN-T (warfighter information network-tactical) and JTRS are the two highest priorities in the modernization of Army communications. (See related story)

There is a joint program office for JTRS, but the Army is the "executive agent." The Pentagon's Defense Acquisition Board last month approved the initial procurement of JTRS, called Cluster 1. In this phase, the Pentagon will buy as many as 50,000 radios for Army aviation, Army ground vehicles and Air Force ground-based air-traffic controllers.

Subsequent dusters are expected to cover an additional 200,000 radios-maritime and airborne systems for the Navy and hand-held radios for the Army and the Air Force.

The JTRS will be a family of tactical radios, based on a common software architecture that is compatible with existing military radio waveforms. JTRS radios will be reprogrammed, like computers, to operate with at least 29 existing waveforms. Most radios today perform a single function and are not software-based.

A waveform--a pattern that occurs when modulation techniques are applied to a radio frequency-defines the radio's functionality.

The contractors in Cluster 1 were asked to propose a new wideband networking waveform for JTRS. The Defense Department wants the new wideband waveform to be able to manage bandwidth allocation in its networks.

Whoever is awarded a contract for the Cluster 1 procurement also will develop the wideband waveform, said Lt. Col. David Lockhart, project manager for JTRS. The goal is to have radios in the field by 2004.

The procurement strategy for JTRS is unusual, because it separates the development of software and hardware, which is not how the industry traditionally produces radios.

The two prime contractors expected to compete in Cluster 1--the Raytheon Co. and the Boeing Co.--can only participate as systems integrators and are excluded from the hardware production work. Each integrator must line up at least two radio manufacturers to compete against each other for future production work.

"The Army wants two sources for just about everything in the system," said Richard E. Hitt Jr., director of business development at the Raytheon Co.'s communications division. "We are talking to a lot of companies," Hitt said. "We are interviewing contractors for different positions."

The two radio manufacturers on Raytheon's team are Motorola Inc. and ITT Industries. Science Applications International Corp. also joined the Raytheon team.

Under the Boeing team are TRW Inc., as well as radio manufacturers BAE Systems, Harris RF Communications and Rockwell Collins.

"Manufacturers have no production guarantees" under the JTRS arrangement said Byron Tarver, from Motorola. "This is a different approach." If Raytheon's team wins, Motorola will compete against ITT for production work Motorola also would compete against Raytheon for the development of the encryption module.

In the opposing team, Boeing is considering at least two, possibly three competing encryption systems, said Jerry McElwee, the company's director of government systems.

A Raytheon-led consortium had been selected in 1999 to develop the so-called Software Communications Architecture (SCA) for JTRS. That work still is going, even though the program is moving into production, said Hitt.

"Raytheon owns the source code, but provides unlimited use of that code to the government, for military applications," he said. The SCA 1.0 and 2.0 versions are available on the JPO web site.

Lockhart said that the government "owns and controls the SCA and provides it to all potential offerors. It was created using an industry consortium, of which Raytheon was a member, but does not control."

Hitt denied that his company's role in the software development gives Raytheon a big advantage in the Cluster 1 competition. ""The issue is not who can write code, but who can master the networking," he said. At Raytheon, "we've amassed waveform know-how:"

Ken A. Peterman, director of marketing at Rockwell Collins, agreed that knowledge of waveform technology is critical in order to win the JTRS contract. Rockwell is a member of Boeing's team. "We have a number of patents in this technology," Peterman said.

"Networking is a major component of the system," said Kevin Kane, director of military programs at Harris RF Communications. Ultimately, he said, the winning team will have to deliver a suite of waveforms implemented in the JTRS format that would be able to run on any radio.

"Everyone in the industry has done something with wideband waveforms and wideband networking," Kane said. In the Boeing team, "We will take the best pieces from each company."

Most radio companies already are aligned with either Raytheon or Boeing. Among those that have not signed up with a team yet is Thales Communications, a manufacturer of hand-held radios.

"We are looking to participate with some of the hardware primes," said Felix J. Boccadoro, the company's director of business development. "We have a contract with JPO to implement the SCA in a handheld configuration," he said. "We are intimately familiar with the SCA."

Boccadoro agreed with other industrialists that the acquisition strategy for JTRS is unusual, because after a team is selected, the radio manufacturers have to compete with others within the team. Nevertheless, he said, companies want to participate in JTRS, because it's the only game in town. "You can't play in any other way. ... If you want to be in the radio business, you have to be in this program."

Sandra I. Erwin

Survivor Radio Recovers From Program Delays

The Defense Departments budget for fiscal year 2002 includes nearly $30 million for the development and low-rate production of a new portable survivor radio equipped with an embedded satellite receiver. This technology would make it easier and faster to locate downed aircrews any place in the world.

The system, called CSEL (combat survivor/evader locator), originally was supposed to be fielded in 1998, but it will not be available until at least 2003, largely because the military services and the contractors underestimated the technical complexity of the system and its ability to operate in the water.

If it works as advertised, the CSEL system would allow recovery units to pinpoint the location and communicate with downed aircrews who need to be rescued.

During the next decade, the Army, Navy, Air Force and U.S. Special Operations Command plan to buy nearly 50,000 hand-held CSEL radios. CSEL is a joint program, but the Air Force is the lead service, responsible for managing the project, even though each service approves its own individual purchases. The prime contractor is Boeing Information and Communications Systems.

The system will replace traditional personnel recovery communications equipment such as the PRC-112 radio, which is limited to line-of-sight operations. The PRC-112 radio relies solely on the search-and-rescue aircraft instruments to triangulate the distress radio signal to locate downed aircrews. Because the search aircraft and the survivor/evader on the ground are generating radio signals, they easily could be detected by the enemy, officials said.

Even though the CSEL. system relies on Global Positioning System (GPS) satellite data to locate survivors, it uses a secure signal that, unlike conventional GPS, is accessible only by U.S. military personnel and allies. Civilian GPS receivers and emergency beacons only would be used as a last resort. The Pentagon also requires that the system be protected from jamming or spoofing, which occurs when an enemy interferes with the signal and provides invalid positioning. Scott O'Grady, the Air Force pilot stranded and rescued in Bosnia in 1996, had commercial GPS, so anyone could have heard him over the radio, guiding the rescuers toward his location.

Using the CSEL radio, downed aviators also can exchange text messages with rescue coordination centers around the world.

There are several pieces that make up the CSEL system: the hand-held radios and computers, four dedicated UHF (ultra-high frequency) satellite base stations for two-way secure communications, and other ground-based search-and-rescue sites that process information. CSEL users will be able to communicate via classified networks, except in the Earth poles, where the UHF satellites don't provide wide enough coverage. In latitudes above 72 degrees North and below 72 degrees South, they will use non-secure international search-and-rescue satellite systems.

Two of the four UHF base stations will be located in the United States (Hawaii and Norfolk, Va.) and two in Italy (Naples and Sicily). These facilities currently are U.S. Navy UHF satellite communications centers. They provide a conduit for the radio signals to be transmitted over the horizon and fed into the existing secure military networks.

After several delays and development glitches, the CSEL program has shown "significant progress" during the past several months, said David Avery, an engineer with DCS Corp., in San Diego. The company is under contract to the Navy's CSEL program office.

After several tests in Hawaii this spring, CSEL received "favorable reviews from joint team," said Avery in an interview.

During a late August meeting at the Pentagon, CSEL program manager, Air Force Lt. Col. David Madden, briefed representatives from the Joint Forces Command and the Joint Personnel Recovery Agency.

The CSEL joint program office wants to start low-rate production of Air Force radios this fiscal year. A production decision was postponed last year, because the manufacturer of the GPS module, a division of Alliant Techsystems, was acquired by L3 Communications. The change in contractors delayed the testing said Avery.

The service that experienced the most problems with CSEL was the Navy. As a result, the House Appropriations Committee zeroed out the Navy's CSEL procurement account in fiscal 2001. "To the best of our knowledge, it is expected that Navy '01 funding will not be restored," said an Air Force spokesman.

"The Navy had more problems [because it operates in a] harsher environment," said Avery. Initially, the CSEL radio-set/adapter interface between the radio and the computer were not suitable for the marine environment and failed to work properly when exposed to moisture and salt. The system subsequently was redesigned. Having a waterproof system was a high priority for the Navy, said Avery. "If a helicopter goes down in the water the PRC112 has to be placed in a waterproof baggie to work. The CSEL was tested, and it's waterproof and has longer battery life."

The CSEL budget for fiscal year 2002 includes $12.7 million for the Army, $11 million for development and testing of the Air Force system, and $2 million for procurement of six radio systems and ground stations. The Navy requested $2.9 million and is expected to increase the CSEL budget to $9.1 million in fiscal 2003.

All three services expect to continue to buy CSEL radios until 2009 or 2010. The naval aviation community will get 9,000, the Air Force 16,500, the Army 18,500 and the Naval Special Warfare Command will receive 1,650.

There are several reasons why CSEL will be fielded at least five years behind schedule, said Avery. He said that Boeing should not be blamed for the delays, because the Defense Department added new requirements to CSEL after the initial contract was awarded to Boeing.

A Boeing spokeswoman said that company officials were not available to comment on the CSEL program.

Among the new requirements added was an encryption module mandated by the National Security Agency to tamper-proof text messages, the so-called Selected Availability Anti-Spoofing coding to protect the GPS signal, a satellite frequency-sharing technology called (demand assigned multiple access) and new software to make search-and-rescue workstations interoperable.

"If someone stole one of these radios, he could not extract codes or software design because of the tamper-proof code," Avery said.

At the time that those requirements were set, "the technology wasn't there," he added. "They had to wait for that technology to catch up to the requirements."

As it turned out, the program needed more research and development funding than had been anticipated. "The program never had been intended to have a large R&D budget, because it was an 'acquisition reform' program," Avery said. "But the new requirements meant that more R&D funds were needed. That slowed down the program."

Another "challenge" that delayed the program was the need to package the required electronics into a radio that can fit in the pocket of a survival vest, Avery explained. It's not easy to get enough power out of the radio so it can go over the horizon through the satellite systems, he said. "Why can't it be small like a cell phone? The cell only can transmit about 8 miles. CSEL has to go up 22,000 miles to the satellite."

Text messages--that can be read both by aircraft crews searching for the survivor and by the command and planning staff back on the ships--are used to authenticate the identity of the survivor.

The Defense Department's mandated standard for tactical radios, called JTRS (joint tactical radio system), was waived for CSEL, because JTRS came about after the CSEL program was under way.

The slowdown in the CSEL program has increased the workload at the Army's Tobyhanna Depot, in Pennsylvania. The depot is responsible for repairing the PRC-112 radios.

"The 112s are aging and failing at a large rate. There is no production line or spare parts mechanisms," said Avery. "They are trying to keep them working until CSEL can be fielded."

In December 2000, a New Jersey-based firm, Engineering and Professional Services (EPS) received a contract to upgrade the AN/PRC-112 survival radio to a "D" model. The contractor has to remove the obsolete modules and replace them with state-of-the-art circuitry, said Fenton Yip, production engineer at the Army's Logistics Readiness Center, in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.

EPS formed a consortium with Tadiran/Spectralink, Kaiser Electronics and Tobyhanna Army Depot to perform the work on the PRC-112. EPS is the prime contractor. Tadiran/Spectralink is responsible for repackaging the radio circuitry. Kaiser Electronics makes the new circuit card upgrade kits. At Tobyhanna Army Depot, workers remove the old electronics and install the upgrade kits into the PRC-112 radio.

Yip explained that the elimination of obsolete modules--reducing them from 11 to two circuit cards--will create space in the radio for a slot that can accept future enhancements, such as a secure GPS transponder and a search-and-rescue satellite-aided tracking capability.

The revamped PRC-112s will consume less power, Yip said. The current requirement is for the radio to operate 12 hours on the existing battery. That requirement recently was upped to 20 hours.

Additionally, the upgraded radios will have the capability to erase the survival ID codes and the preset frequencies of the radio to prevent an enemy from capturing the data, he said.

Under the contract with EPS, the company must provide commercial rechargeable/non-rechargeable batteries for the PRC-112 radio. The radio currently uses Army-unique batteries, which are expensive and cumbersome to order, said Yip. "The concept is to use the existing radio battery case, so the user will be able to open the battery case and substitute new commercial AA battery cells."

Sandra I. Erwin