Pentagon to invest in PC-style radios: Defense Dept. hopes to save millions of dollars in future upgrade costs.

The Defense Department's decision to spend at least $1 billion during the next five years on a new family of combat radios will force companies in the tactical communications industry to change their marketing strategies both in the United States and internationally.

Beginning in 2005, the U.S. military services will start replacing traditional single-function radios with the so-called joint tactical radio system. JTRS radios are software-defined and work like a PC. A single box will operate every waveform used by the Defense Department.

In late June, the JTRS program office awarded an $865 million contract to a team led by the Boeing Co. to develop Cluster 1 of the JTRS radios. These will replace existing ground-vehicle radios for the U.S. Army, Air Force, Marines, as well as Army aviation radios. The Boeing-led consortium beat its long-time rival, the Raytheon Co.

Boeing's win was viewed as an upset victory, given that Raytheon's team, which includes ITT Industries and General Dynamics, manufactures nearly two-thirds of all U.S. tactical radios.

It is estimated that, under Cluster 1, the contractors ultimately could build up to 100,000 radios during the next 10-15 years--most of them for Army and Marine ground vehicles. The Air Force would buy about 500 and more than 2,000 would be allocated for Army helicopters. There are 21 waveforms in the Cluster 1 lot. Subsequent clusters will add at least 12 more.

Boeing will not manufacture the radios, but will serve as the systems integrator. The hardware will be produced by Rockwell Collins, BAE Systems and Harris RF Communications.

"This award shows that the Defense Department is buying into the software communications architecture," said Air Force Col. Steve MacClaird, program manager for JTRS. He said that the military services collectively operate 750,000 radios today. At least 250,000 JTRS systems would be needed to supplant the existing radios. In many cases, he said, one JTRS radio can replace five traditional radios on a Humvee, for example.

During a briefing to reporters in Washington, McClaird said that one of the main strengths in the Boeing proposal was the "unlimited software rights for the government." That is important, he said, because it will save the Defense Department millions of dollars a year that currently are spent on software-programmable radios.

It should be noted that software-based radios have been around for many years. But industry experts caution that there are various levels of maturity in these radios.

A software radio, per se, is a communications device whose capabilities are developed as software and its functions are implemented via software.

But the industry today offers at least three types of software radios: software-capable, software-programmable and software-defined.

The Army's single-channel ground and airborne radio (SINCGARS), for example, is software-capable, because some of its capabilities were executed with software. Radios such as the Harris PRC-117F and the Raytheon PSC-5D are software-programmable, since they can be upgraded with software and reprogrammed to operate in two or three different bands.

The Navy's Digital Modular Radio (DMR), made by General Dynamics Corp., is considered a software-defined radio, because all of its features were created and implemented in software. It has no knobs or manual controls.

JTRS would achieve a significant technology leap, because it would have an open architecture, like a PC. The military users would decide what waveform they need to load on their radios. The government would own a library of waveforms and the technology would be refreshed via software downloads.

The good news for radio manufacturers is that they can expect contracts to produce at least 250,000 new radios in the years ahead. Even though Boeing won Cluster 1, there will be future competitions for the subsequent clusters. The next one will focus on handheld radios for the Special Operations Command and conventional ground forces. Clusters 3 and 4 will concentrate on maritime and airborne radios, respectively.

The bad news for contractors, however, is that, once JTRS radios are fielded, the upgrades will be done with software that the government already has paid for. So the industry's upgrade business will suffer, said Jeffrey L. Markel, president of BAE Systems Communications, Navigation and Identification unit. "We will need a new business model for radio makers," he told National Defense.

If the upgrades only call for software changes, he said, "we won't sell as many radios."

International Market

Outside the United States, meanwhile, there could be a fledging market for JTRS radios, assuming that the Defense and State Departments approve them for export.

Several NATO countries are "looking at the JTRS software communications architecture, to develop their own software-defined radios," said Bernard Deffis, from Thales Communications. His company is a member of Raytheon's JTRS team.

"In Europe, we will not have a massive acquisition program like the United States," he said during a news conference in Paris, in late June. "We are going to increment step by step, based on each country's budget."

The most compelling argument that NATO countries could make for buying JTRS is the compatibility with U.S. radios, said Deffis. "There is a requirement for interoperability."

Herve Barbier, Thales Communications' director of strategy, explained that most countries have their own radio programs, so they are only likely to buy JTRS radios as "incremental upgrades."

The U.S. services also will be buying radios as they wait for JTRS, but in much smaller quantities, predicted John Oglesby, Raytheon's vice president of C3I business development.

"There's been a significant reduction in procurement, because of JTRS," he said during an interview.

Companies today are offering a variety of radios that are software programmable, "so you can implement different waveforms," said Oglesby. "But they don't provide the capability that JTRS provides."

Even though many radios are heading technologically in the direction of JTRS, "suggesting that what they are showing today would do the JTRS task is not true," he said.

The advent of JTRS also has forced adjustments to the marketing approach of ITT Industries. The company makes the Army's SINCGARS radio, in addition to other military and commercial tactical communications systems.

Keith Nettleton, the company's senior international marketing manager said that JTRS is not necessarily driving the requirements of non-U.S. buyers, "But it's in the back of everyone's minds, including ours."

Having lost the Cluster 1 competition, the company already is looking ahead to Cluster 2, which will include handheld radios for infantry soldiers and special-warfare commandos.

Less than a year ago, ITT unveiled a new handheld VHF (very high frequency) radio. It was designed to be a JTRS handheld radio, for the Cluster 2 competition, said Nettleton in an interview at a defense trade show in Paris.

"The impetus for this radio came from our international customers," he said. ITT funded the development with internal corporate research dollars. "We surveyed them about what they need in a handheld radio," he added. Most military users, he noted, want a radio that is small, lightweight, primarily for voice communications at the squad level, that operates on low power (about 2 watts) and that is simple to operate.

"We looked at what's coming up in JTRS Cluster 2 and we want to position ourselves to win that contract.

In an earlier phase of the JTRS program, ITT had developed a prototype radio with the SINCGARS waveform. "We took that waveform and that is what is running in this handheld radio. ... It is SGA.2 compliant."

In recent months, the company decided to modify the radio, to make it modular. That means the RF (radio frequency) section and the main span section can be separated into self-contained modules. "That allows us to slap on a UHF (ultra-high frequency) module, so we can cover both the VHF and the UHF bands, like the MBITR radio."

The MBITR is the handheld multi-band intra-ream radio made by Thales. A huge hit among U.S. Marines and special operations forces, the MBITR radio has in some ways become the standard for handheld radios today.

ITT also decided to add an RF port on the back of the radio, which fits a military vehicle mount, said Nettleton. "You can drop this radio into the vehicle mount and take the RF out to the vehicle radio, or you can run the RF through our standard 51-watt power amplifier and then to a vehicle radio, in effect making a poor man's vehicle radio out of a handheld radio."

The company is hoping to sell this radio to U.S. Army special operations units. A Defense Department policy stipulates that any military service that wants to buy a non-JTRS radio has to request a special waiver. But special-warfare units are exempt from that policy, said Nettleton. "When they identify a requirement, they have the authority to go and buy it."

The Army commandos like the ITT handheld, he said, "because it will frequency hop with SINCGARS." The U.S. Army has more than 200,000 SINCGARS in the field today. "If they can carry something in their hand and they can talk to their vehicle-mounted SINCGARS radio, that is an attractive feature," said Nettleton.

In the future, he said, "JTRS will interoperate with any SINCGARS radio we sell today."

Outside the United States, there are potential buyers of tactical radios in so-called "adjacent markets," which include border patrol agencies, police units and anti-poaching enforcement authorities in Africa, Nettleton said.

The international market for combat radios, by any measure, is far from homogeneous. For NATO forces, "interoperability is a very big issue," he said. For the militaries of Middle Eastern nations, conversely, interoperability is as high a priority as security and encryption. Persian Gulf countries "first and foremost want to have national security," he said. "They want to know that their communications are secure from their neighbors."

Improved security and encryption are among the features touted by Harris RF in its new handheld multi-band radio, unveiled in June. Chet Massari, the company's president, noted that, for a small radio, it has significant processing power. "We refer to these platforms as a computer that transmits," he said. The radio has "embedded security that will fundamentally code messages on a constantly changing basis," he said. "The messages change waves and frequency." This will make it difficult, if not impossible, for enemies to unscramble messages, said Massari "Our product incorporates the highest level of encryption and anti-jam capabilities. ... Our adversaries are getting more sophisticated, so this has brought on the need for programmable crypro-technology."