General Dynamics JTRS HMS Rifleman Radios Complete Formal Operational Testing

The JTRS HMS net­work­ing radios are the first ground-domain radios to meet the full suite of JTRS oper­a­tional require­ments for the U.S. mil­i­tary.

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The JTRS HMS AN/PRC-154 Rifle­man radio by Gen­er­al Dynam­ics C4 Sys­tems com­plet­ed its Ini­tial Oper­a­tional Test and Eval­u­a­tion (IOT&E) dur­ing the U.S. Army’s recent­ly con­clud­ed Net­work Inte­gra­tion Eval­u­a­tion at Fort Bliss, Texas. The Rifle­man radio, one of the Joint Tac­ti­cal Radio Sys­tem (JTRS) Hand­held, Man­pack, Small Form Fit (HMS) fam­i­ly of radios, is the first JTRS radio to use the Sol­dier Radio Wave­form (SRW) to enable secure net­worked com­mu­ni­ca­tions among pla­toon, squad and team-lev­el sol­diers and their lead­ers. The IOT&E is the last for­mal test required by the mil­i­tary before the radios enter full-rate production. 

“We’re get­ting great feed­back from sol­diers who pre­fer the Rifle­man radio, rather than lug­ging bulky wide­band hand­held radios that require extra bat­ter­ies,” said Chris Brady, vice pres­i­dent of Assured Com­mu­ni­ca­tions for Gen­er­al Dynam­ics C4 Sys­tems. “With the Rifle­man Radio, sol­diers can con­nect their cell phone or com­put­er and join the network—anywhere they fight.” 

Mem­bers of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Armored Divi­sion (2/1 AD) eval­u­at­ed the AN/PRC-154 Rifle­man radio in a vari­ety of tac­ti­cal exer­cis­es that includ­ed con­voy oper­a­tions, recon­nais­sance, coun­terin­sur­gency and med­ical evac­u­a­tion mis­sions. In a recent Army announce­ment„ Capt. Ryan McNal­ly, a com­pa­ny com­man­der with the 2/1 AD, said the abil­i­ty to com­mu­ni­cate with the radios instead of shout­ing or using hand-and-arm sig­nals had altered his sol­diers’ tac­ti­cal approach to their missions. 

“We have to fac­tor in being able to talk to each oth­er over a dis­tance, rather than every­body being essen­tial­ly co-locat­ed with a lim­it­ed amount of space and dis­tance between them. Now we can expand that space and dis­tance. We can cov­er a larg­er area,” McNal­ly said. 

In the same report a 2/1 AD pla­toon leader, 2nd Lt. Travis V. Mount, said the tech­nol­o­gy show­ing the posi­tions of his troops allowed him to save time by imme­di­ate­ly adapt­ing and exe­cut­ing his plans rather than track­ing down per­son­nel first. 

“No mat­ter what kind of orga­ni­za­tion you’re run­ning, if you have dis­mounts who are going to be on the ground you like to be able to see where your per­son­nel are,” Mount said. “If all I need is infor­ma­tion on their posi­tion, I don’t have to go through an inter­me­di­ary. I can on the spot adapt my plan.” 

In June 2011, the JTRS HMS pro­gram achieved a Mile­stone C deci­sion, enabling the Low Rate Ini­tial Pro­duc­tion of 6,250 AN/PRC-154 Rifle­man and 100 AN/PRC-155 Man­pack radios. JTRS HMS radios take full advan­tage of the government’s library of wave­forms, includ­ing the Sol­dier Radio Wave­form, and in the future, the Mobile User Objec­tive Sys­tem (MUOS) and Wide­band Net­work­ing Wave­form (WNW) crit­i­cal to com­mu­ni­cat­ing on the Army’s emerg­ing tac­ti­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tions network. 

Gen­er­al Dynam­ics C4 Sys­tems is prime con­trac­tor for the JTRS HMS pro­gram. The JTRS HMS team includes BAE Sys­tems (Wayne, N.J.); Rock­well Collins (Cedar Rapids, Iowa); and Thales Com­mu­ni­ca­tions (Clarks­burg, Md.). 

The full Army announce­ment is avail­able online at www.dvidshub.net/news/80654/rifleman-radio-completes-key-operational-test-nie.

For more infor­ma­tion about JTRS HMS radios by Gen­er­al Dynam­ics C4 Sys­tems, please vis­it www.gdradios.com.

Gen­er­al Dynam­ics C4 Sys­tems is a busi­ness unit of Gen­er­al Dynam­ics (NYSE: GD). Infor­ma­tion about Gen­er­al Dynam­ics is avail­able online at www.generaldynamics.com.

Source:
Gen­er­al Dynam­ics C4 Systems 

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