Army Changes JTRS Strategy After Termination Of Ground Mobile Radio

By Tony Bertuca, InsideDefense.com, October 21, 2011 -

Now that the Ground Mobile Radio has been canceled, the Army has altered its Joint Tactical Radio System acquisition plans to include a search for non-developmental, off-the shelf capabilities for less money, according to the JTRS program executive officer.

"We have been given the go to execute a [non-developmental item] strategy," Brig. Gen. Michael Williamson said during an Oct. 18 teleconference with reporters. "This is essentially going to be an evaluation and a selection. The Army intends to conduct a full and open competition in early 2012 leveraging mature technologies to provide soldiers with central communications on the battlefield."

A request for proposals for a two-channel digital radio that runs the Wideband Network and Soldier Radio waveforms will likely be issued in the next few months, he said. The JTRS programs of record for the Handheld Manpack Small Form Fit and Rifleman radios are still moving forward, however, as is the Airborne Maritime Fixed Station radio.

The GMR contract belonged to Boeing, which won a $2 billion award to develop the vehicle-mounted, four-channel radio in 2002. But the GMR was recently canceled due to unsustainable cost overruns which triggered a Nunn-McCurdy breach in June. The breach came as the Army lowered its GMR acquisition objective from 86,000 units to just 10,000. Based on that reduction, the average procurement unit cost of a GMR was $186,000, according to JTRS spokesman Jeff Mercer.

Williamson said the GMR quantity reduction itself was the result of the cancellation of the Future Combat Systems effort and the Army's changing network plans. He added that the GMR was not canceled because of poor performance at the Army's biannual Network Integration Evaluation, but rather because it had stringent requirements forced upon it that drove cost and size. He denied the notion that the GMR termination amounted to a failure of the acquisition system to properly identify requirements and cost targets.

"My view is that this is an evolution," he said. "We invested heavily in the [research and development] in the waveforms and the hardware to run it. Now that we've made that investment, we believe industry can now pick that up and bring us the capability a lot cheaper and a lot faster."

Another bright spot, Williamson said, was that the Army and Pentagon waited to cancel the GMR until the contract with Boeing had expired, thus saving the government any termination costs.

Williamson also reiterated the Army's No 1. radio talking point: The service does not care about the radio "box," only the non-proprietary waveforms (WNW and SRW) used to operate it. This position has led to an interesting development, however.

While the Army has canceled the GMR, it still has a requirement for a GMR-like radio to field capability sets 2013-14. As first reported by InsideDefense.com, the service will purchase eight brigade combat teams' worth of Harris Corporation's two-channel 117G radios as short-term replacements to the GMR. The Army has since awarded a $66 million contract to Harris to support procurement of the radios. While the exact quantity is not known, Williamson said he expected it to be approximately 100 units per BCT, an estimation that was seconded by an Army source familiar with the decision.

But a wrinkle remains: The 177G radios operate using Harris' proprietary ANW2 waveform, and the Army now finds itself in the position of negotiating with the company to bring ANW2 into the JTRS repository. The terms and conditions have yet to be decided.

"We're actually in negotiations with them now," Williamson said in response to a question posed by Inside the Army. "ANW2 is demonstrated; it's being using in combat today. We've reached out to Harris to say, 'you've got to bring in the waveform.' The discussion we're having with Harris is, what are the government's rights to that waveform when it goes in the repository? Because if it goes into my repository, I'm making it available to everyone."

Harris officials, meanwhile, said they were open to working with the Army to do that.

As for the official GMR replacement contest, Williamson said he could name four vendors that would be able to bring solutions to the upcoming NIEs that would qualify. Some of the possible contenders include Harris, General Dynamics and ITT.

"This cleared the path for the Army . . . to pursue a lower-cost and more secure alternative that we think will be available within the available radio market," he said. "I welcome the opportunity to pursue an alternative."