Subject: [NEXTEL-1] JTRS soldier contract delayed

From: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 07:25:36 -0400

JTRS soldier contract delayed
BY Frank Tiboni
April 16, 2004

The Army postponed the award of the handheld, backpack and wearable
devices' contract for the Joint Tactical Radio System, according to
military and industry officials.

Army acquisition officials will meet April 26 to review the program. The
service will not award the contract until after the meeting, said Tim
Rider, spokesman for the Fort Monmouth, N.J.-based Program Executive
Office-Command, Control and Communications-Tactical, which manages the
initiative. Industry officials had expected the contract award in
mid-March. Military officials said it would occur in April.

JTRS devices are designed to replace the military's disparate radios
with a unified standard that can be customized for each service. The
military owns more than 750,000 radios of 25 makes and models, many of
which are incompatible.
DOD officials hope the new systems will decrease those numbers and
increase radio functionality by operating across the spectrum from 2MHz
to 2GHz. JTRS radio abilities will be defined largely by software, which
should make updates easier for new applications and allow radio casings
to be used more than once.

ITT Industries Inc. in Fort Wayne, Ind., and General Dynamics Corp. in
Falls Church, Va., led industry teams and submitted proposals for JTRS
Cluster 5, said officials on both teams. The Cluster 5 program will
produce in 2005 the first JTRS software-defined radio, said Air Force
Col. Steven MacLaird, director of the JTRS Joint Program Office in
Washington, D.C.
The military divided the JTRS program into categories called clusters:

Cluster 1: Army air and ground vehicles.
Cluster 2: Special Operations Command systems.
Cluster 5: Three Army devices.
AMF: the Air Force and Navy airborne/maritime-fixed stations.

The Air Force and the Navy in November combined their JTRS programs,
called Clusters 3 and 4. Military officials expect Cluster 1 and 2
radios to be ready in 2007, and AMF in 2009.

The Army awarded a contract in 2001 to an industry team led by Boeing
Co. in Chicago to develop the JTRS architecture and build radios for
Army air and ground vehicles.

http://www.fcw.com/fcw/articles/2004/0412/web-jtrs-04-16-04.asp
--
    "NEXTEL-1 IT'S NOT JUST NEXTEL"
  Note The New address
Subscribe to Nextel-1: http://www.groups.yahoo.com/subscribe/NEXTEL-1

  "NEXTEL2 FOR iDEN SOFTWARE DEVELOPERS"
Subscribe to Nextel2: http://www.groups.yahoo.com/subscribe/NEXTEL2

  "WIRELESS FORUM HOMELAND SECURITY GROUP"
     The Complete Resource for Wireless Homeland Security.
Subscribe to WFHSG:  http://www.groups.yahoo.com/subscribe/WFHSG