US Prepares to Wrap Up JTRS

The US military is preparing to wrap up the activities of its Joint Program Executive Office (JPEO) for the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) and transfer the subordinate programmes back to individual services by the end of this fiscal year.

The JPEO JTRS was established in February 2005 with a mandate ‘to develop, produce, integrate and field a family of interoperable, digital, modular, software-defined radios that operate as nodes in a network to ensure secure wireless communications and networking services for mobile and fixed forces’.

Based in San Diego, California, the JPEO encompassed subordinate efforts of Ground Mobile Radio (GMR); Handheld, Manpack and Small form fit (HMS); Airborne, Maritime and Fixed-station (AMF); Multifunctional Information Distribution System (MIDS); and the Network Enterprise Domain (NED) products that provide the core of interoperable networking capabilities.

Late last year the US Army began a ‘graceful exit’ from GMR toward a Multi-tier Networking Vehicular Radio [See ‘Gathering the Threads,’ Digital Battlespace Mar-Apr 2012]. 

More recently, HMS handheld radios saw early deployment in theatre with the 75th Ranger Regiment and both handheld and two-channel manpack HMS radios were tested during the army’s Network Integration Evaluation (NIE) events.  

Speculating on the future of the JTRS programme during ‘West 2012’ earlier this year, JTRS JPEO Brig Gen Michael Williamson offered a glimpse of possible office transformation. 

Referring to a series of meetings with Department of Defense leadership, he related: ‘One of the things that was asked, and I think it was the right question, was the JTRS Enterprise has been progressing and it looks like you’re now starting to deliver these capabilities. So, as you start to move to procurement, is this an opportunity for some of these programmes of record, as they transfer out of the SDD [system development and demonstration] and RDT&E phases, to go back to the services?

‘So we were given direction in late December to come back with some data on this and to start developing a plan which would facilitate that,’ he added.

Although there was no approved plan at that time, the programme redirection was subsequently contained in one of several Acquisition Decision Memorandums (ADMs) signed in early July. Another of the ADMs reportedly approved additional buys of HMS handheld radios.

As a result of the ADM direction, processes are now being established to transition the three remaining hardware programmes – HMS, AMF and MIDS – back to the services, with HMS and AMF going to the army while MIDS goes to the navy. The army is also pursuing the MNVR non-developmental item capability based in part on prior GMR requirements.

Other remains of the JPEO will be used to create a Joint Tactical Networking Center (JTNC), which will stand up approximately 1 October, with the former NED element of JTRS renamed as the Joint Tactical Network (JTN) programme and becoming part of JTNC.