Forget JTRS for FCS, Try WiMax

The Government Accountability Office reported on March 12 that the wideband version of the Joint Tactical Radio System will not be ready to support the Army's $159 billion Future Combat System program until 2017 or 2018 -- that's two years after the service starts fielding all FCS vehicles, gadgets, and gizmos.

Since the Defense Department has been working on a family of JTRS radios since 1997, maybe the Army will indeed have a wideband radio in 2017, two decades after someone had the brilliant idea to replace all military battlefield radios with a bunch of "software defined radios."

But, the GAO said in a report last year that JTRS is neither practical nor affordable, with costs projected to double from $3.5 billion to $6 billion by the time the Army starts fielding it.

In that case, maybe the Army might want to consider commercial WiMax wideband technology to move piles of data around the battlefield. WiMax got a thumbs up this year from John Grimes, assistant secretary of Defense for networks and information integration and Defense's chief information officer. In a January 30 memo, Grimes approved the use of WiMax on Defense networks with some caveats, including the requirement to use the Federal Information Processing Standard 140, which all wireless geeks know and love, along with a National Security Agency-approved high assurance internet protocol encryptor.

Since commercial WiMax gear is available from a wide range of companies, the Army need not wait until almost the end of the decade to meet its battlefield wideband requirements and might even save a billion dollars or so.

But, maybe JTRS wideband has some secret sauce I don't know about that makes it worth waiting for - even though a 20-year wait is a long development cycle for any outfit, even the Army.