Army delays broadband radio buy for up to three months
By
Bob Brewin
Julie Jacobson/AP
The Army's plans to acquire up to 10,000 broadband tactical radios hit a speed bump this week after the service announced the solicitation could lag anywhere from "a few weeks to as long as three months . . . due to a resourcing and congressional approval requirement."
A spokesman for the Army's Program Executive Office for Command, Control and Communications-Tactical, which is running the procurement, did not respond to phone calls and emails from Nextgov seeking an explanation.
The Army said in November 2011 that it planned to kick off a procurement for the broadband radio, the Joint Tactical Radio System's Mid-Tier Networking Vehicular Radio in February 2012 to replace the $15 billion JTRS Ground Mobile Radio project the Pentagon terminated due to spiraling costs and poor performance in tests.
The Army wants to acquire commercial radios that can run the government-owned Wideband Networking Waveform software, which is capable of transmitting data at a rate of 2 megabits per second. Brig. Gen. Michael Williamson, JTRS program executive officer, in January told Nextgov that he estimated the cost of the Mid-Tier Networking Vehicular Radio to be in the $60,000 to $80,000 range, down sharply from the $150,000 he estimated in October 2011.
The Army plans to field JTRS radios to at least three brigade combat teams that will deploy to Afghanistan in 2013. Paul Mehney, a spokesman for the Army's System of Systems Integration Directorate, said the delay in the Mid-Tier Networking Vehicular Radio acquisition will not have any effect on those units, as they will be equipped with broadband radios from Harris Corp. The Army eventually intends to equip its combat brigades with the Mid-Tier Networking Vehicular Radio, Mehney said.
Harris and a Northrop Grumman/ITT Exelis team both plan to bid on Mid-Tier Networking Vehicular Radio procurement.