ADVISE AND PROTECT
A Soldier from the 3rd BCT, 101st Airborne Division (Air Assault) (3-101 ABN) communicates using a Manpack Radio while other 3-101 ABN troops conduct force protection during an advising visit to the Afghan police Regional Logistics Center, Nangarhar province, Afghanistan, in February. Using the NDI approach means that Soldiers will be able to take advantage of rapidly advancing software-defined radio technology. (U.S. Army photo by CPT Jarrod Morris, Train Advise Assist Command – East Public Affairs)
its mission—to pass voice and data simultaneously and “bridge” platoons into the Army network—in a more user-friendly and power-efficient package. Te low-rate initial production version of the Manpack began fielding to brigade combat teams (BCTs) in 2013.
Another JTRS lesson learned came with the Ground Mobile Radio (GMR), a four-channel
radio with even more ambi-
tious requirements that experienced problems with size, power consumption and start-up time. After more than 10 years of development, the GMR program was restructured in 2011. Te Joint Program Executive Office for JTRS was stood down and eliminated in 2012, with the Army’s radio procurement mission transferred to the Program Executive Office Command, Con- trol and Communications – Tactical (PEO C3T) and renamed as Project Manager Tactical Radios (PM TR).
Trough the JTRS experience, the Army learned the hard way that software-defined radios were still hardware-dependent, and our requirements needed to reflect that. Just as today’s smart- phones undergo hardware refreshes every few years to support the newest operating systems, radio hardware must continuously evolve in parallel with waveform software. Tat reality—and the maturity achieved in the commercial, software-defined radio
market as a consequence of the JTRS developmental effort—led the Army to a new approach and a new look at how we define the requirements to get radios right.
THE NDI APPROACH Over the past
two years, as more and more radio vendors
matured their hardware to successfully port government-owned, nonproprietary waveforms onto their radio platforms, the Army implemented a new “radio marketplace” acquisition approach that aims to cut costs and deliver radios more quickly using non-developmental item (NDI) products. Tis approach relies on industry to provide already developed, mature radios that can meet specific requirements and are compatible with govern- ment-owned waveforms.
Te first radio to be procured using the NDI strategy was the Mid-tier Networking Vehicular Radio (MNVR), the successor to the GMR. Using the Wideband Networking Waveform, SRW and legacy waveforms such as SINCGARS, MNVR closes a criti- cal data gap on the battlefield by connecting the lower-tier tactical network at the company level with the upper tier at battalion and brigade levels. After full and open competition, the MNVR pro- gram purchased an initial set of 232 radios in September 2013, and those radios are being used for testing, assessments, certification
ASC.ARMY.MIL 37
ACQUISITION
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