The Army has requested $1.4 billion in supplemental funding to buy a radio for soldiers that the service’s own science board recommends it should “stop buying immediately.”
A briefing from an Army Science Board summer study of the service’s plan for future networks urged the service to halt the purchase of its current radio of choice, the Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System (SINCGARS).
The Army eventually plans to purchase the software-defined Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) for its ground vehicles and soldiers. The science board looks to that future, recommending that in the near term, the Army purchase software-defined radios that can emulate SINCGARS, because they would provide more flexibility and a path to link to new radio waveforms as well as be compatible with waveforms in the Army’s inventory.
“JTRS compliant radios are available now,” the report notes.
Because of the need to provide radios to soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, the service has increased production of SINCGARS from its lone supplier– ITT Corp. [ITT].
Despite requests from lawmakers to increase the supplier base, the Army conducted a market survey in May and found nothing that met its specifications.
“Therefore, SINCGARS remains the radio of choice to meet these fielding requirements,” said the Army’s Communications-Electronics Life Cycle Management Command in a statement.
The Army defended its decision to continue purchasing SINCGARS radios saying that not enough JTRS radios will be available until between 2011 and 2013. Besides, the science board “reflects a common misconception that the SINCGARS radio is not software programmable, when in fact it is, albeit not an SCA compliant software architecture radio,” the statement said.
The Army has added hooks to SINCGARS radios that enable the Army to purchase an upgrade that would allow the radio to host waveforms like the Soldier Radio Waveform.
The service is assessing its total SINCGARS requirement.
A planned supplemental in FY ’09 would support the service’s plan to field the radio through FY ’10 and would include an assessment of even more SINCGARS radios that would support the service’s plan to increase the size of the Army through FY ’13, according to the Army statement.
Whether the service’s plans will pass muster with Congress is an open question.
The House version of its authorization bill questioned the increase in cost of SINCGARS by $3,000 per radio between the FY ’07 and FY ’08.
“This growth occurred despite no change in the type of radios procured and a dramatic increase in the overall number of radios planned for procurement,” the bill said.
Noting that increase in cost and noting a Government Accountability Office report that said only 44,900 of 98,410 radios requested can actually be delivered by FY ’10, the bill recommended cutting the FY ’08 supplemental request to $615.9 million. The Senate bill expressed similar concerns and recommended a smaller reduction–$375 million.
The House and Senate will soon meet in conference to reconcile differences in the bill.