Soldiers show some ingenuity during tests of next-generation radios

White Sands Missile Range, N.M. -- Contractors might have developed the advanced battlefield communications systems the Army is testing here, but it was soldiers who adapted the technology to fit requirements only a warrior on the front lines would know, the kind of ingenuity that harkens back to the Civil War.

This month, soldiers are testing the new Rifleman Radio, an advanced handheld, software-based device the service believes will provide a generational leap in the way troops communicate on the battlefield. The radio, part of the Joint Tactical Radio System program, has been built for the data-rich environment that soldiers now operate in and is designed to send and receive data-rich images and to provide different ways to communicate, including chat room-like venues, to quickly exchange intelligence.

So far during the two week, $12 million exercise that is scheduled to finish Sept. 28, soldiers had to devise a workaround to some of the inherent shortcomings of Rifleman Radio. For example, the extent of its reception is only about 3 miles. That range isn't enough to cover the 350 square miles that make up the exercise area inside White Sand's sprawling 3,200-square-mile base, which runs from north of El Paso, Texas, to south of Socorro, N.M.

To boost coverage, soldiers applied the simple rule that the higher an antenna, the longer its range, and they hung one of the devices from a blimp, or aerostat, and sent it up several thousand feet so it hovered over the exercise area, said Maj. Bill Venable, assistant project manager for the infantry brigade combat team in the Army's Program Executive Office for Integration.

The radio-loaded aerostat served as a relay station to extend coverage to almost 25 miles, a solution that is similar to how the Army Signal Corps increased its range of sight during the Civil War by sending observers up in balloons.

In addition, the Army didn't need a lot of high-priced integration to develop the ad hoc relay. "We just tied it onto the aerostat," Venable said.

The Army has tested its next-generation battlefield communications systems at White Sands for the past two years, but this exercise marks a distinct change from past experiments, said Col. Daniel Pinnell, commander of the Army evaluation task force, which consists of the 5th Brigade of the 1st Armored Division, which is stationed at Fort Bliss, Texas, south of the test area.

This year's exercise is more realistic than past tests, and attempts to mimic operations in Afghanistan by featuring two mock villages that soldiers populate. The systems the Army is testing tie together troops patrolling the villages on foot and those riding mine-resistant ambush-protected vehicles farther away.

The exercise, which the Army calls a limit user test, amounts to a pass-fail experiment for the JTRS ground mobile radio, developed by Boeing and its companion network integration kit, which is intended to provide the Army with a battlefield mobile network capable of moving data at high speed.

The Army originally designed the network to support communications between various new combat vehicles, and motion and optical sensors that were being developed under its $160 billion Future Combat Systems program. Defense Secretary Robert Gates canceled the program in April 2009. That left the service with a network designed primarily to transmit sensor data, but Pinnell said feedback from soldiers participating in tests has changed the way the Army plans to use system.

The Army has reconfigured the network to push all kinds of broadband data, such as satellite imagery down to small, company-level units, that lacks wideband connections.

The system includes computer terminals mounted in MRAPs, which allow young, keyboard-savvy soldiers to conduct and manage operations in Internet-type chat rooms, which, Pinnell said, "they much prefer to talking over the radio."

Sgt. Michael Gimble, a scout team leader with the brigade, demonstrated his keyboard virtuosity by popping open a window to select an image, clicking on a chat room icon and sending the image to another soldier, who quickly acknowledged he received the file.

The new systems require soldiers already overburdened by body armor and packs to carry extra weight, which Spec. 4th Class Joel Eninger found daunting. Eninger spent a day hauling tactical unmanned ground sensors and their batteries to the top of a steep, nearly 900-foot hill. Taking a brick-like battery from his pack, he wondered when the Army would come up with lighter batteries to ease his load.

Although the Army has great hopes for the wideband ground mobile radio and the network integration kit, Staff Sgt. Patrick Harmon said the two pieces of gear still need some work. The ground mobile radio takes a long time to connect to the network and the integration kit frequently crashes, he said.

Col. Steve Duke, who works with the Army Test and Evaluation Command's Operational Test Command's Maneuver Test Directorate, said that feedback is what the Army needs its soldiers to provide during the exercise. Soldiers should report if the new gear is effective, suitable and survivable in combat.