NDM Article - Sticker Shock Felt As New Radios Are Acquired

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July 2004

Sticker Shock Felt As New Radios Are Acquired

by Sandra I. Erwin

Despite suffering from sticker shock, the military services are proceeding with plans to install a new generation of software-based tactical radios that will be common across all weapon systems.

The joint tactical radio system, known as JTRS, is the linchpin of the Pentagon’s plan to field forces that operate compatible communications technologies. But facing an estimated $40 billion price tag to replace every radio with JTRS, the services have sought ways to upgrade their weapon systems with JTRS-compatible technology, without necessarily developing a whole new box.

The cost of equipping military jets and command-and-control aircraft with new radios is particularly worrisome to the services, because the retrofit and integration work often can reach five times the price of the actual radio.

A case in point is the Navy’s MIDS (multifunction information distribution system) radios, equipped with the Link 16 data link. In development for more than a decade, MIDS has become the de facto standard for military aircraft, because it gives pilots a real-time picture of the combat zone. The Navy already has committed to purchasing 5,000 to 6,000 MIDS radios.

European allies also employ the MIDS terminal, and helped fund the program. Nearly 60 percent of the terminals were built by Germany, Spain, Italy and France. Full rate production started in September 2003.

With billions of dollars already spent on MIDS development and procurement, the U.S. Navy was not receptive to the idea that it would have to spend yet additional billions to upgrade its aircraft with JTRS. The solution was to make the existing MIDS boxes “JTRS-compliant.”

Each MIDS terminal costs about $250,000. By comparison, an Army voice radio (called SINCGARS) runs anywhere from $8,000 to $18,000. The Army’s high-capacity data radio (called EPLRS) costs approximately $29,000.

In addition to being a data link and navigation system, MIDS is a communications terminal, with two secure voice channels.

When the JTRS program got under way in 2001, the Defense Department told the Navy to come up with a “migration plan” to transition MIDS to JTRS terminals.

The Navy estimated that just to retrofit MIDS-equipped aircraft with a new JTRS box would cost $150 million. A new radio requires compliant racks, mounts, cooling, and power systems. In the Super Hornet aircraft alone, just redesigning the avionics bay would have added $100 million to the program.

The Navy convinced the Defense Department that it makes more sense to modify the MIDS terminal so it could operate like a JTRS box—a PC-like device that runs radio waveforms as if they were software applications. “We want JTRS systems that fit into the same rack mounts, use the same power, cooling and interface connectors,” said Capt. Mike Huff, Navy program manager for MIDS.

A JTRS radio must be capable of running 22 waveforms. The Army is developing the terminals for helicopters, ground vehicles and dismounted soldiers. The Navy and the Air Force are collaborating on a so-called “airborne maritime” JTRS terminal. The MIDS-JTRS is a subset of the airborne radio program.

The new MIDS-JTRS will take the existing box, add software reprogrammable technology, and three more channels, for a total of four channels. One channel will operate the Link 16. The other three channels will be programmed with other waveforms, such as SINCGARS or EPLRS.

“We produced a four-channel box that replaces the one-channel MIDS,” Huff told an industry conference hosted by the Institute for Defense and Government Advancement.

The new MIDS-JTRS boxes will be installed beginning in 2006, according to Huff. He expects that at least 1,800 weapon systems will receive the new terminals.

The Air Force decided to integrate MIDS-JTRS on 500 Block 30 F-16s and 400 A-10 aircraft, said Huff. “We are up to about 2,600 terminals that we see a requirement for in MIDS-JTRS.”

Among the “major headaches” anticipated in this program, Huff said, is obtaining permission from the U.S. government to share JTRS technology with the MIDS partner countries.

He said the MIDS office is working with the Defense Department and the National Security Agency to figure out how the Europeans can participate in this program.

“For each software module, we have to seek NSA guidance to release information,” he said. “It’s very painful.”

Unlike the current MIDS, where the encryption chip is a piece of hardware, the JTRS is entirely software based. “In JTRS, we have reprogrammable [security] engines, keys, cryptographic algorithms, and code that is not releasable,” said Huff. “Somehow, we have to come up with a way to package it in an anti-tamper environment. NSA is working on this.”

Under a worst-case scenario, the allies would have to develop their own software and each partner would have to come up with compatible algorithms for interoperability, said Huff. “We really don’t want to do that. We want the United States to do the [security] work and find a way to provide it to them.”