By B.C. Kessner
Textron [TXT] last week unveiled FASTCOM, a lash-up of mostly existing intelligence, operations, and communications systems that would allow brigade commanders to set up encrypted 3G or 4G cellular networks and swap information with front line soldiers equipped with smart phones such as Motorola‘s [MOT] Droid.
“We actually have a private 3G Sprint network functioning live here in the basement of the Washington Convention Center,” Steven Reid, Textron’s vice president, Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS), told Defense Daily. “It’s really here, and really working…and as the word has spread around, we’ve had a veritable Who’s Who of VIPs coming over here to look at this,” he added.
Textron demonstrated its secure cellular bubble and collaborative information sharing systems 25-27 Oct. at the Association of the United States Army (AUSA) Annual Symposium in Washington, D.C.
Real-time input from unmanned systems, multiple forms of intelligence, unattended sensors, and manned-unmanned teams was combined and disseminated through the encrypted cellular network with reach-back capability into a variety of databases.
“What we’re doing is reconfiguring investments that have already been made out there by the military,” Reid said. “We’re pulling it all together, and enabling it in a secure environment through our Shadow, which can just sit up there and act as a Pico Cell base station.”
The capability is intended for the brigade commander, each of whom in the Army’s brigade-centric operational architecture has Shadow UAS at his disposal, Reid said.
The mobile communications solution is powered by Shadow, or another air asset equipped with Pico Cell transceiver system external pods. The aircraft delivers telemetry data and communicates with the battlespace network, including mission radios and satellite communications backhaul equipment. It also gives network users direct access to intelligence fusion systems, such as the company’s T-Rex Tactical Remote Exploitation Terminal.
The wings and enabling air structure needed to mount the FASTCOM pods on Shadow have already been fielded and are flying nine-hour missions in Afghanistan and Iraq, Reid said. The pods essentially give the UAS a cell tower capability.
The network can handle 100 secure users, who are able to swap information at the SECRET level and below. At the tactical altitudes Shadow typically flies, the system creates a 13-mile cone of private, mobile, and secure communications.
Reid said that if the pods were to put onto a Gray Eagle UAS operating at higher altitudes, it could create about a 50-mile secure bubble, operated with the same Universal Ground Control Station (UGCS).
An aerostat or a high flying hybrid airship such as the Army’s Long Endurance Multi-Intelligence Vehicle (LEMV) could also host the network capability, Reid added. Textron won a place on the Northrop Grumman [NOC] team that was awarded a $517 million contract by the Army for a LEMV demonstrator likely to incorporate UGCS (Defense Daily, June 16).
“We’ve tied everything into our UGCS, gone essentially into the backbone for some of the national databases that allow HUMINT…even Twitter feeds, all kinds of capability to develop intelligence around a bad guy,” Reid said.
“The big initiative is that it’s right to the pointy end of the spear…the battlefield guys can draw these quick relationships and connect these databases in a secure environment,” he added. “It all goes back into what we call ‘The Cloud’ so we can access all these databases that reside back on the Internet somewhere.”
FASTCOM employs smart phones such as Droid equipped with the SoldierEyes suite of command, control, intelligence, support, and situational awareness software applications.
Textron and partner ViaSat [VSAT] are in the process of getting final approvals from the National Security Agency on the encryption process for the Droid, Reid said.
“What’s nice is that it’s a software modification, so the phone itself never becomes a piece of COMSEC gear and you can actually have soldiers out on the battlefield with these phones. They can be zeroized remotely, and we have put a lot of energy into addressing the security requirements on how this would actually be fieldable in a secure situation,” he added.
Reid said the company assembled the capability demonstration uncertain about where it would take them, but hoping to make a splash at AUSA. “We’ve just been invited to conduct a demonstration out at Ft. Huachuca, and of course we’re getting a lot of very positive feedback here at the show,” he added.
At a UAS media roundtable last week, Tim Owings, the Army’s UAS deputy program manager, said there was no real requirement as yet for self-contained 4G networks, other than to study their development and capabilities.
Owings said Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli would like to see a capability where soldiers with an Apple [AAPL] iPhone or Droid-type phone could see UAS payload images and information. He added, however, that the Army was fully committed to the JTRS program and its primary information dissemination means.
“In the longer term, I think we’d be extremely short-sighted if we did not take a harder look at some of these cell networks,” Owings said. For limited areas, they are so cheap, easy to establish, and now with the encryption efforts underway, they could be viable options to work in concert with One System Remote Vehicle Terminals (OSRVT), he added. OSRVT is built by Textron’s AAI and L-3 Communications [LLL].
“If I had to guess, two years from now we’d be talking about some kind of portable 4G network that would support end users,” Owings said. Companies including Textron, L-3, Raytheon [RTN], and Sierra Nevada Corp. are putting a lot of money into these technologies, he added.
“We are still going to need larger pipes across the battlefield,” Owings said. “But personally, I think it’s a way we’re going to end up…because if you look at the cost of a handheld iPhone or Droid compared to other devices on the battlefield there is a pretty darn good argument from an efficiency and cost standpoint.”