The Joint Program Executive Officer (JPEO) for the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) said it successfully completed the Soldier Radio Waveform (SRW) Interoperability Quicklook laboratory test designed to investigate the ability of SRW to communicate real time voice and data across waveforms installed on radio platforms from multiple vendors. 

This test was performed at the Space and Naval Warfare Systems Center-Atlantic in Charleston, S.C. May 9-13, the office said in a June 14 statement. 

JTRS government test engineers successfully planned, created and managed an SRW network comprised of four different types of SRW-capable JTRS radios: HMS Production Rifleman Radio (PRR) developed under government contract by the JTRS program, as well as three commercial vendors’ radios, Harris‘[HRS] Falcon III (AN/PRC-117G), ITT‘s [ITT] Soldier Radio, and Northrop Grumman‘s [NOC[ Software Defined Multi-Function Device. 

These vendors obtained the SRW waveform from the JTRS Information Repository and integrated it into their radios using internal funding. Each radio was configured with the latest version of SRW which was recently approved for initial production by the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics. The SRW Network Manager (SRWNM) was utilized to configure and monitor all of the radios throughout the test period. 

“This was the first ever government test event using SRWNM to plan, instantiate and monitor a heterogeneous SRW network that included both JTRS Program of Record and JTRS Commercial radios,” said Navy Capt. Jeff Hoyle, the JTRS Network Enterprise Domain (NED) Program Manager. 

The test results indicate that all participating radios were able to form a network and exchange Internet Protocol (IP) data in an interoperable manner. 

The SRWNM also successfully monitored the configured network throughout the testing, enabling critical insight to the health and status of the heterogeneous SRW network.  

The test highlights the success of JTRS’ innovative Enterprise Business Model (EBM), designed to enable more cost-effective capability growth by applying the concept of competition to an acquisition strategy. This model is a paradigm shift for defense communications in its move away from sole source, stove-piped, point-to-point proprietary systems to a highly competitive, interoperable, networking environment. 

“This test’s success demonstrates the viability of the JTRS Enterprise Business Model in proliferating waveform software reuse to increase competition and interoperability while reducing total ownership costs of defense communications networks,” Hoyle said.