JTRS: Continuity and Change
DESPITE ISSUES WITH KEY PROGRAM CLUSTER,
PENTAGON IS EXPECTED TO MOVE
FORWARD ON FUTURE RADIO SYSTEM.
Although Department of Defense officials expect to make some changes in the Joint Tactical Radio Systems (JTRS) Cluster 1 contract with Boeing, the company will likely remain prime contractor for the program, according to a Pentagon source.
“Boeing is still a player in this, no doubt about it,” the source said, while adding, “There will probably be some revisions to the contract.”
There is vast pressure to move the program forward, the source said, but, at the same time, officials realize that there will be bumps in the road when dealing with new technologies.
“A lot of people are saying, ‘These [JTRS] phases aren’t coming quick enough’ or whatever,” the source said. “But having been with it, this is emerging technology. It’s a heck of an undertaking.”
DoD is betting billions on JTRS, a family of common software-defined programmable interoperable radios built around a standard open architecture. The radios will enable warfighters to communicate with each other regardless of the frequency, modulation or bandwidth being used by their equipment.
JTRS was organized into four clusters: Cluster 1, vehicle and airborne sets; Cluster 2, handheld sets; AMF Cluster, a merger of the original clusters 3 and 4, for airborne, maritime and fixed-station platforms; and Cluster 5, handhelds, manpacks and small-form fits for the Army’s Future Combat Systems.
The program has been reorganized under a joint program executive office, however, and subject to a Joint Requirements Oversight process. Among the changes, the cluster nomenclature is being abandoned. From now on, the Army’s portion of the JTRS program is known as “JTRS Ground Systems.” Cluster 1 becomes “Ground Mobile Radio,” while Cluster 5 will be known as “Handheld/Manpack/Small Form Fit (HMS) radios.
Debate continues within the military and industry on the objectives of the program and whether the same needs can be met by cheaper, off-the-shelf technology sooner. Funding concerns, technological glitches and the Pentagon’s recasting of priorities to better support combat troops now are also raising questions about the program, analysts say.
“As far as I’m concerned, the jury is still out on where JTRS goes and how long it will take to get there,” said Dean Lockwood, a weapons system analyst for Forecast International. “It’s obvious that the government is out buying other alternatives [for radios] right now. If something is already in the system, it is hard to get rid of it. [Field commanders] want something that works, and they want it now.”
GO-FORWARD PLAN
DoD awarded Boeing a $384-million contract in 2002 to develop and field the first phase of Cluster 1. Subcontractors for Boeing on Cluster 1 include Rockwell Collins, Northrop Grumman, BAE Systems and Harris.
After department officials last year issued a “show cause” letter notifying Boeing that it was considering terminating the Cluster 1 program, the DoD Defense Acquisition Board (DAB) and officials from the Joint Program Executive Office for JTRS met in October to continue discussions on whether Boeing should remain the prime contractor for JTRS Cluster 1. The DAB announced in November that it would not make any final decisions concerning the future of the JTRS program until after the department had completed its fiscal 2007 budget request.
In December, Senate and House appropriators agreed to cut $334 million from the JTRS program due to program uncertainties and technical delays. Lawmakers also agreed to require the JTRS joint program executive officer, Dennis Bauman, to certify the JTRS program of each military service and submit a report to Congress by May 1.
Boeing will continue to work with the JPEO on a “go-forward plan” for Cluster 1, said spokesman Jerry Drelling. The plan will be available from the government when it has completed the approval process, Drelling said.
“Boeing’s JTRS C1 team is prepared to support the government’s go-forward plan for the program,” he said. “This is, and always has been, about placing this transformational communications system in the hands of the warfighter as quickly as possible.”
In January, Boeing delivered the first seven JTRS Cluster 1 radios to the Army’s Future Combat Systems program. Additional units will be delivered to the FCS program in increments, to bring the total number of radios to 50 by later summer, the company said.
Cluster 1 is continuing to make progress and probably will not undergo any major changes, said Ralph Moslener, program manager for Boeing’s JTRS C1 program.
“We don’t expect any large swings in the program, but we do expect some adjustments in requirements,” he said. “So what we will do in the May or possibly June time frame, will be to baseline some of the requirements for the first increment of the program and proceed on from there.”
Moslener said the decision to develop Cluster 1 in increments provides “a lower risk schedule going forward.”
“We are quite positive that we have a program that’s going to bring this capability to the warfighter absolutely as quickly as we can and yet go through all of the processes that the government needs to do to certify that the radio does what it is supposed to do in a secure environment,” he said.
Observers say problems with Cluster 1 have most affected Cluster 5, which will provide the Army with manpack and handheld radios, as well as radios used with munitions and small unmanned aerial vehicles. The Army in 2004 awarded General Dynamics a $295 million contract for the system development and demonstration phase of Cluster 5.
In April 2005, the service issued a partial stop-work order to General Dynamics on Spiral 1 of JTRS Cluster 5 because of development delays in Cluster 1 and late deliveries of waveforms coming from the JTRS joint program office.
Since that time, the concept of spirals has been eliminated and deliveries of radios are now aligned with dependent programs. This change provides initial capability earlier and adds new capability on an incremental basis over time at lower risk. An award for initial production of early form factors is anticipated in late 2008.
Chris Brady, vice president of assured communication systems for General Dynamics C4 Systems, told Military Information Technology the company is “on schedule and budget” with HMS (formerly Cluster 5) radios.
“Impacts of Cluster 1 problems were realized early in 2005 because of late availability of software and waveforms,” Brady said. “These issues have been addressed and there is currently no impact on development of handheld, manpack, small-form-fit radios due to Cluster 1.”
The next major milestone for the HMS radios will occur in May, when the program will undergo a software-specification review, which will be used to address new security requirements, Brady said. That milestone will be followed by a series of design-readiness reviews that will begin this fall.
Prototype radios running the latest version of the Soldier Radio Waveform will also be available at this time for the Soldier Warrior and FCS programs, to satisfy their need for initial system integration. The design readiness review represents the last largescale government review of the design before development units are delivered to be tested, according to the company.
General Dynamics feels fortunate to be playing a vital role in the development of this next-generation radio communications system, Brady said. “JTRS is a strategic program of great importance to warfighters, in that it represents the future of tactical communications,” he said. “The HMS radios are carefully designed to be uncompromising for warfighters by eliminating the security vulnerabilities inherent in networked software-defined radios. DoD and other government authorities have made it clear that nothing less will do.”
LEGACY ALTERNATIVES
The primary problems facing JTRS include potential congressional cuts to the program, technology development issues and off-the-shelf alternatives to the radios. Because of mounting fiscal pressure from deployments overseas and the need to get technology into the hands of troops now, large defense programs such as JTRS and Future Combat Systems will be scrutinized for cuts in the coming years, noted Peter Nesbit, an aerospace analyst for JSA Research.
The recent congressional cuts in JTRS funding were due to program uncertainties and delays, Nesbit suggested. “I think Congress was just sending a message that it wasn’t satisfied with JTRS,” he said.
Technology development remains a key concern as well. A Government Accountability Office study last summer argued that steep technical challenges, a highly compressed schedule and an ambitious set of user requirements are all factors in putting programs such as JTRS at risk of not delivering intended capabilities for the Army’s FCS first spiral beginning in 2008.
Because JTRS isn’t scheduled to deliver until the future, other companies will have the opportunity to develop more advanced off-the-shelf technologies to compete with the product, Lockwood said.
Raytheon and ITT Industries are collaborating on two new software communications systems that they hope can fill military needs more quickly—the MicroLight-3G and the Single Channel Ground and Airborne Advanced Improvement Program-Enhanced (SINCGARS ASIP-E).
MicroLight-3G is a wearable softwaredefined radio designed to improve military communication by linking warfighters to a tactical Internet. SINCGARS ASIP-E adds a small ultra high frequency (UHF) expansion module to the current SINCGARS ASIP radio, thus providing high frequency voice and UHF data communication channels for vehicular and manpack operations.
The two new products share common modules, waveform capabilities and operating environments. Pre-production units for user evaluation will be available later this year, the companies said.
The two products represent “a watershed event for warfighters,” according to Lou Dollive, president of the ITT Aerospace/Communication Division.
“MicroLight-3G and ASIP-E establish a migration strategy that can put emerging JTRS capabilities in the hands of the deployed forces far sooner than we previously anticipated,” Dollive said.
Complications with JTRS have prompted the services to reorder more legacy radios as well.
In this year’s supplemental spending bill, Congress approved $767 million for the services to purchase more than 37,000 SINCGARS radios. The desire for proven technology and the need to get solutions into the hands of warfighters as soon as possible offer a good opportunity for companies that can rapidly provide viable radio options, according to weapons analyst Lockwood.
“Each day, you see [the services make] more deals for alternative radios,” he said.
As for the other JTRS clusters, Boeing and Lockheed Martin are vying for the system development and demonstration contract phase of the AMF JTRS program. DoD could select a winner from among the two as early as this spring, program officials said.
CLUSTER 2
Thales Communications, which is the lead for Cluster 2, announced in January that it had achieved software communications architecture (SCA) certification for its Cluster 2 JTRS Enhanced Multiband Inter-Intra Team Radio (JEM). The radio is the first SCA-certified JTRS radio to be approved by the National Security Agency for Type 1 encryption, the company indicated.
“Under the government’s Cluster 2 program, the Thales JEM has successfully passed the complete gauntlet of government testing and evaluation, ensuring that the radio will meet the needs of the warfighter,” said Mitch Herbets, president and chief executive officer of Thales Communications. “The SCA and NSA certifications represent a significant milestone for communication technology and the JTRS program.” ♦
