Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Technology will let service maintain command and control on the move

From: Marcelrf <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 25 Feb 2004 17:37:56 -0500

Wednesday, February 25, 2004

Marines build bridge to new radio system
Technology will let service maintain command and control on the move
BY Matthew French
Feb. 23, 2004

Marine Corps officials are developing technology that will bridge the
gap between existing radio systems and the future software-based Joint
Tactical Radio System (JTRS).

The technology, called Command and Control on the Move Network, Digital
Over the Horizon Relay (CONDOR), is designed to use legacy radios to
provide network access for warfighters.  CONDOR will allow troops on the
ground to become accustomed to JTRS, which will use
software-programmable radio technology to provide real-time
communications through voice, data and video across the military
services, before it becomes mandatory.

At the same time, the technology will provide command and control on the
move and eliminate beyond-line-of-sight barriers that have plagued
battlefield communications.

"This is an interim communications architecture approach that allows us
to provide Marines with the solutions to issues on the battlefield now,
while evolving our equipment, tactics, techniques, procedures and
doctrine at the same time," said Marine Lt. Col. J.D. Wilson, a program
manager for command, control, communications, computers and intelligence
at Marine Corps Systems Command.

The CONDOR program evolved out of lessons learned from Operation Iraqi
Freedom and Operation Enduring Freedom, according to Marine Lt. Col.
Debra Beutel of the command and control integration branch of the
Expeditionary Force Development Center at Marine Corps Combat
Development Command.

The Marines' maneuver units — frontline troops and the mobile groups
that support them — often had problems maintaining the desired level of
command and control, Beutel said. Although they were able to maintain
command and control, it was often over narrower bandwidth and at slower
speeds than commanders would have liked.

CONDOR "is a process to address those shortfalls," Beutel said. "This is
an architecture built from the bottom up."
The military owns more than 750,000 radios of 25 makes and models, many
of which cannot talk to each other. Military officials hope the new
systems will decrease those numbers and increase radio functionality.
JTRS devices will be defined largely by software, which should make
updates easier for new applications and allow radio casings to be
reused.
"We still have [the same] 20,000 radios out there that I had when I was
a second lieutenant 33 years ago," said Army Lt. Gen. Steven Boutelle,
testifying Feb. 11 before a House Armed Services Committee subcommittee.
Unfortunately, the full rollout of the program is still a decade or more
away.

CONDOR will rely on a mix of existing radio technology and JTRS
waveforms, software applications that translate various signals. The
Marines will establish points of presence on the battlefield that will
be able to relay data beyond the line of sight using tactical or
Inmarsat satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles or any other node on the
network. The points of presence serve as nodes that connect the
frontline troops to the network without stopping an advance, setting up
a satellite dish, finding an available satellite and establishing a
connection.

"When JTRS does come along, we can drop it straight into this system and
move on without skipping a beat," Wilson said.
Peter Camana, director of advanced systems at ViaSat Inc., a satellite
communications company in Carlsbad, Calif., said in October that first
adopters of JTRS may not be able to take full advantage of the system's
capabilities because it will outpace legacy systems.

"There is still going to be significant overlap between JTRS and
software-defined radios and legacy radios," Camana said. "We must
support both simultaneously, and then the deployment plan is going to be
very important."
Wilson said he hopes to field-test units by the end of the calendar
year, and current plans call for rapid procurement of CONDOR in 2006.

http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2004/0223/tec-marines-02-23-04.asp

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