Cost of new battlefield radio program pegged at $1.5 billion

The cost of a new, slimmed down Army program to field tactical broadband radios will run between $1.5 billion and $1.7 billion, Army Brig. Gen. Michael Williamson, executive officer for the Joint Tactical Radio System program, told a press briefing Tuesday.

On Friday the Defense Department canceled a more than decade old, $15.9 billion Boeing Co. project to develop a broadband Ground Mobile Radio. Williamson said both Defense and the Army want to replace those radios with ones developed by industry.

Williamson said the Army wants to spend $150,000 or less per radio and intends to buy between 10,000 and 11,000 of them. Maj. Christopher Kasker, an Army spokesman, said the service wants to run a procurement in 2012, with the new broadband radios fielded in 2014.

While he agreed with that schedule, Williamson said the JTRS program office, which is developing a family of new tactical radios for Defense, should run the procurement for the Army.

The new broadband radios, like those developed by Boeing, will run Wideband Networking Waveform software owned by the government. That software defines, among other things, rates, modulation and frequency. Williamson said he knows of at least four companies that can port that software to radios they developed on their own.

The JTRS program office does not intend to rush into a procurement, he said, but plans to spend the rest of this year evaluating and assessing potential commercially developed radios that could meet the broadband radio requirements.