The Joint Tactical Radio System, in development since 1999 when I only had a few gray hairs, failed another series of tests last year at Fort Bliss, Texas.
Dr. J. Michael Gilmore, the Defense Department's director of operational test and evaluation, told a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee on Wednesday that an April 2009 test of the Rifleman Radio, planned for use by grunts, highlighted deficiencies in reliability, battery life and range.
The JTRS Ground Mobile Radio, planned for use in vehicles, had yet another slip in development testing because of hardware and software problems, Gilmore said.
A test of the wideband version of the Ground Mobile Radio showed it had low throughput and the National Security Agency also identified security issues with it, he said.
Since the Army plans to use these radios in its future highly networked force, maybe it's finally time to give up on the grand JTRS vision to develop a family of software-defined radios for all the services and just buy a pile of plain vanilla radios.
COMMENTS
This is nuts!! I left the Army in 1991 and at that time we had been working on a joint tactical radio for at least 10 years. I can't believe that the Services are still playing with our soldiers lives and capabilities to communicate with other Services. Sounds like a fleecing of the Pentagon....
Bruce Porter 03/15/10 08:24 am ET