By Ann Roosevelt
FT. LAUDERDALE, Fla.–The Harris [HRS] AN/PRC-117G wideband tactical radio, built on the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) enterprise business model, continues to evolve even as it receives high marks from soldiers and Marines in the field, a top company official said.
“All the reports that are coming back to the Army, to the Marine Corps, are very positive, both about the radio performance but probably as equally important is the power of wideband communications down at the tactical edge,” Dennis Moran, vice president, Government Business Development, Harris RF Communications, said here at the Association of the United States Army winter symposium Feb. 25.
“Everything the Army’s been saying, the DoD’s been saying, about wideband communications is turning out to be absolutely true,” said Moran.
“From a product perspective we’re on track to port the Soldier Radio Waveform (SRW) by this summer. We remain on track for that,” he said.
The Army is anxious to get the radios into their laboratories both at Ft. Bliss, Texas and with the Communications Electronics Research Development and Engineering Center (CERDEC) to begin testing and integration work.
Also this summer Harris will roll out its wideband handheld radio that it calls the 152 Alpha.
“Now we have wideband down to a manpack radio that also can be vehicular and by this summer we’ll have wideband all the way down to the mobile soldier in a very convenient form factor,” Moran said.
Harris is in the final phases of certifying the 152 Alpha with NSA.
The company is anticipating the first launch orders for the 152 Alpha probably in the July time frame, both with the Marine Corps and potentially the special operations force (SOF) market. The company has started to show it to the Army.
The company also is excited about the Brigade Combat Team Integration Exercise that will likely run from July through October at Ft. Bliss, he said.
“Its going to be the opportunity for commercial IT products to be presented to the Army in order to fill capability gaps,” Moran said. “We’ve been invited to participate in this first exercise and we’re in the process of working the details of that with the Army.”
The reason for the invitation is that the AN/PRC-117G is being used in Afghanistan and one of the purposes of this exercise is to test new capabilities that are going to go in to the Afghan theater and since Harris is an integral part of the architecture “we’ll be part of their baseline,” he said.
Defense contractors are going to have to look differently at the market, Moran said. With traditional large programs going away, the way the Army defines requirements will change somewhat, so the way industry brings solutions will have to be different, Moran said. Solutions will have to be based on a platform that can grow over time, that’s affordable, and probably most importantly–companies will have to pay attention and be more engaged with the users down at the tactical edge as opposed to only paying attention to the development of large programs with headquarters TRADOC and the funding of those programs in Washington.
“I would argue that’s why Harris RF Communications division is so well positioned for this kind of environment, because we have been at the forward edge with our offices, so we’re in touch with what the Army needs from a communications perspective and we use that feedback loop to develop new products and then bring those to the user for evaluation and when they’re satisfied we’re ready to bring them to market,” Moran said.