By linking several communication systems and devices, the Army and Navy have developed a method of transmitting voice calls and location information over the vast distances with which soldiers and sailors must operate in the Asia-Pacific region.

On Feb. 18, soldiers on board an Army logistics supply vessel (LSV) demonstrated integrated communication capability among the ship, Oahu and the Big Island of Hawaii as they sailed among the islands. Soldiers aboard the ship established seamless voice and data communication with units on land more than 200 miles away, according to the Army’s Command, Control and Communications-Tactical program office.  

Spc. Adrian Quidachay, Signal Company, Headquarters and Headquarters Battalion, 25th Infantry Division, conducts data and chat communications with a Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) Feb. 18 on Schofield Barracks, Hawaii.
Spc. Adrian Quidachay, Signal Company, Headquarters and Headquarters Battalion, 25th Infantry Division, conducts data and chat communications with a Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) Feb. 18 on Schofield Barracks, Hawaii.

During the exercise, the LSV was equipped with a General Dynamics AN/PRC-155 Manpack radio, one of three main components of the Army’s Joint Tactical Radio System. The ship also was equipped with a vehicle-on-the-move antenna that was plugged into its communication system.

A total of five locations on both islands also were equipped with Manpack radios–the man-portable, platoon-and-above two-channel radio. For the demonstration, the Manpack radios were running the Navy’s satellite-based Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) waveform. Using MUOS and the Joint Battle Command Platform (JBCP), the five locations were able to talk, text, share data and track friendly force locations, according to the Army.

“As the Army focuses more on the Pacific theater, it is critical for Soldiers in that region to be able to communicate back to land when they are traveling thousands of miles at sea,” Col. James P. Ross, the Army’s project manager for tactical radios, said in a prepared statement.

MUOS works in much the same way as commercial cellular service and packs 10 times the bandwidth capacity as the ultra-high frequency (UHF) system it is replacing. A message is sent from one Manpack radio, bounced off one of the four MUOS satellites to a ground station, bounces off another satellite and is received by another radio, enabling beyond-line-of-sight communications over vast distances.

Force location data is displayed on the JBC-P, which uses Blue Force Tracking satellites to pinpoint friendly forces and display them on the Army’s smartphone-like Nett Warrior device.

That capability is essential to organizing logistics and troops movements throughout the enormous Pacific region, according to Army commanders. The 25th Infantry Division routinely deploys small units to far-flung allied countries in the region to conduct joint exercises and humanitarian assistance, but the Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System (SINCGARS) legacy waveform can’t handle the distances.

The additional bandwidth allowed by Manpack and MUOS allows soldiers to maintain communication with their commanders and supply lines in remote areas where bandwidth is limited.

“MUOS fills an urgent need for additional tactical satellite within the Pacific,” Lt. Col. Joseph Pishock, communications officer for the 25th Infantry Division, is quoted as saying. “There currently are not enough channels to support units deployed into the Asia-Pacific theater reliably. With MUOS, we can conduct simple chats, send small images and even use it with other systems to transmit position location information.”

Manpack was designed to run multiple waveforms including MUOS and legacy systems like SINCGARS and soldier radio waveform, the channel on which individual soldiers’ rifleman radios operate. The Army already has purchased 5,326 AN/PRC-155 Manpack radios, the fielding of which has been hampered by delays in testing.

“This successful demonstration, in addition to the joint U.S. Army-Navy evaluation in November 2015, exhibits the military readiness of the MUOS communications network and that the AN/PRC-155 MUOS-Manpack radio is the only radio to successfully connect military personnel with the new MUOS network in multiple operational settings,” Mike DiBiase, a vice president at GD Mission Systems, said in a statement.  “As the Army prioritizes where the AN/PRC-155 MUOS-Manpack radios go, soldiers can count on it to provide the connectivity and crystal clear voice communications wherever they are deployed, particularly in areas where the landscape or geographic location seriously impedes network connectivity.”

The Army is expected to award up to three indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts for the Manpack radio before the end of April, after which the winning designs will go into a series of tests before fielding. Source selection is ongoing among a field that includes Harris Corp. [HRS], General Dynamics [GD], Rockwell Collins [COL] and Thales