New ideas for military communications

[MUTNAV]

It sounds like the military may try something new for radio communications.

US Army ponders ‘radio as a service’ to keep communications up to date

“It is ironic to me that we would actually come up with any IT program where we think we’re going to be fielding the same capability for decades.”

www.defensenews.com

Joel

 

[gary123]

It may be a financial plus but from someone in industry many larger services and organizations insist on owning the hardware. this is a policy I agree with. Can you imagine a military operation where they need to call a supplier and say "We need 1000 units for Wednesday morning. Program them for 18 channels and use this encryption key. Oh and do not tell anyone about the order its kind of a secret OK?." We all know how systems are constantly being hacked. I am not saying the suppliers are in anyway unreliable, incompetent or a security risk. I am just speculating on a possible worst case scenario.

What I can see as a viable possibility is the purchase and use of commercial hardware. The war in the Ukraine has shown that commercial hardware even cheap low end analog and DMR radios can be a effective and usable communications system.

 

[Project25_MASTR]

What I can see as a viable possibility is the purchase and use of commercial hardware. The war in the Ukraine has shown that commercial hardware even cheap low end analog and DMR radios can be a effective and usable communications system.

There are several DoD contractors who have built and designed battlefield P25 trunking implementations. It has been suggested that several of them have field tested and/or are included in standard deployable systems when reading between the lines (cause they aren't at liberty to actually say).

 

[MUTNAV]

My take on it was a little different....
It feels like how the military gave up on trying to manage base housing (who joins the military to manage a housing complex as an additional duty), sent the job over to contractors, and now they are having trouble managing the contractors.

On the flip side of this is the military people that make the decisions wont be around to feel the effects of any poor (or even just uninformed) decisions, the procurement / deployment cycles are just too long.

Thanks
Joel