The Pentagon’s $20 billion program to develop a family of
digital combat radios is expected to see substantial changes in
scope and technical requirements.
The
adjustments would affect substantial portions of the Defense Department’s
Joint Tactical Radio System, industry sources said. The focus of
the program would shift from replacing current radios to developing
advanced networking technology that could be applied to existing
devices.
JTRS, conceived in the late 1990s, was intended to eventually supplant
more than 750,000 radios in the current military inventory. Unlike
conventional radios, JTRS devices work like PCs and can be programmed
to operate a variety of software communications applications, which,
in the radio world, are called “waveforms.”
The program fell into disarray during the past year for several
reasons. Among them, experts contend, is that even though JTRS is
a “joint” procurement, its organization is very much
service-centric. JTRS was divided into “clusters,” each
managed by a different service. The Army is responsible for cluster
1, which covers the service’s ground-vehicle and helicopter
radios, and cluster 5, which are handheld radios. The Navy and the
Air Force are in charge of the “airborne and maritime”
cluster of JTRS radios to be installed on ships and aircraft.
Another unplanned hurdle for JTRS was the war in Iraq, which prompted
rushed purchases of thousands of new combat radios. Under a 1999
Defense Department rule, each time a military service purchased
radios, it had to seek a “JTRS waiver” from the Pentagon’s
Networks and Information Integration office. The policy gave the
Defense Department an oversight tool to curb unneeded buys of legacy
radios.
After much lobbying by Army and Marine Corps officials, the Defense
Department suspended the waiver policy on May 23. Plagued by delays
and bureaucratic wrangling, the JTRS program is being restructured
under a new management team.
Government and industry sources familiar with the program predict
that JTRS will continue, but that the services will “dumb
down” the performance specifications. They also expect the
revamped management team to set JTRS on a different course, where
the emphasis will be on developing mobile network technology rather
than on replacing radios.
Dennis M. Bauman, JTRS program executive officer, was unavailable
to comment on the future direction of the project, his spokesman
said.
Bauman’s technical advisor, Howard Pace, told Pentagon officials
in June that “not every part of JTRS is in dire straits,”
according to one of the participants in the briefing. Pace showed
a chart that ranked each cluster of JTRS by its level of complexity.
Clusters 1 and 5 were categorized as the highest risks.
Another reason for the change in program requirements is the close
ties between JTRS and the Army’s largest ever procurement
effort, the Future Combat Systems. Until recently, the Army often
had stressed that JTRS was an essential element of the FCS, and
that both programs needed to march in lockstep. With JTRS now years
behind schedule, the Army does not want to see FCS jeopardized in
any way, industry insiders noted.
The FCS program, in fact, complicated JTRS efforts by demanding
more advanced networking features and increased bandwidth, explained
Dan Zanini, vice president of SAIC and deputy program manager for
FCS. Boeing and SAIC are the lead contractors for FCS.
“JTRS got caught in a time warp,” Zanini told reporters.
“When FCS came along, the requirements for wideband increased
in importance.”
The Army does not necessarily need new radios to make FCS work,
Zanini noted. But the project is highly dependent on the “wideband
networking waveform” software that also is being developed
under JTRS.
“JTRS was focused on replacing radios rather than on what
we needed, which is the wideband waveform,” Zanini said.
Boeing, which also is the prime contractor for JTRS cluster 1,
is expected to deliver 40 JTRS prototypes and the wideband waveform
software in January 2006, said Dennis Muilenburg, FCS vice president
at Boeing.
Tactical communications experts, meanwhile, concede that, despite
much hype, the JTRS technology has a long way to go before it can
be used in military operations. Another concern is whether the Pentagon’s
goal of making future JTRS radios compatible with current devices
is technologically feasible.
“The hardest part of JTRS is the backward compatibility with
legacy radios,” said Richard E. Hitt, general manager of Hypres
Inc. The company supplies superconducting microelectronics.
JTRS originally was intended to sync up incompatible legacy radios
by converting the signal in a process known as “cross-banding.”
That requirement had to be watered down because it was technologically
too complex, Hitt said. The favored approach now is to rely on the
wideband networking waveform to link the legacy frequencies.
Another hurdle in trying to make JTRS compatible with legacy radios
is the encryption. Security is implemented differently in each legacy
radio, Hitt said. “Merging these is one of the most complex
tasks in JTRS.”
In Hitt’s opinion, JTRS is hampered by a more fundamental
technology shortfall. “Current JTRS systems suffer from a
dependence on semiconductor-based radio devices, which limit the
conversion of analog radio frequency energy to digital data,”
he explained.
Hypres is banking on the prospect that superconducting electronics
could help build complex radio networks such as JTRS. The company
developed a digital receiver that converts RF signals directly to
digital and eliminates the analog processing, Hitt said. Although
it seems counterintuitive, JTRS are software radios that are dominated
by analog processing, he added.
Three Hypres receivers will be tested at military laboratories.
The company has received about $10 million worth of government contracts
under the Small Business Innovation Research program.
The technology, however, is embryonic and could face an uphill
climb to reach acceptance in the JTRS world. Even the commercial
telecommunications industry has been hesitant to invest in this
technology.
Digital receivers would be too disruptive to the status quo, said
Hitt, and would require “major changes to the current RF architecture.”
Superconducting devices also require cryogenic cooling, which adds
size and weight. That turns off many people in the military radio
market, Hitt noted. “There is ‘cryophobia’”
in the industry … Communications people have no experience
working with cryogenic coolers in their systems.”
Where this technology would pay dividends, he said, is in complex
multi-channel applications that run wideband and broadband waveforms.
The Air Force and Navy JTRS radios, for example, must operate many
channels and execute simultaneous operations in multiple functions,
such as electronic warfare and signals intelligence.
The future of JTRS is “anyone’s guess right now,”
said Brian Curran, aerospace industry analyst at Frost & Sullivan,
a market intelligence firm. The uncertainty will drive contractors
to develop software radios as alternatives to JTRS, he said. “Companies
such as ITT Industries, Harris RF Communications and Thales Communications
will upgrade their legacy radios with new software.”
Curran estimated that spending on military tactical communications
should remain steady at nearly $5 billion per year. The largest
share of the market, he said, is for vehicle radios and intercom
devices.