ITT Demos SRW On-the-Move

Mid-December 2009 saw the US Army’s C4ISR On-the-Move exercise, during which ITT effected the maiden deployment of its Soldier Radio Waveform (SRW) version 1.0c on multiple networks working in simulated military mission environments. The SRW completed its formal qualification tests in January of 2009 and was the first JTRS waveform to reach SCA 2.2.2 compliance, after which the waveform was delivered to the foil heaters to eliminate the need for rod, ceramic, coil or other bulky heaters when in the component or application design stage. The kit includes commercial-grade Polyimide/ ULA and FEP heaters, silicone rubber heaters and thermal-tab RTD sensors, along with engineering instructions, white papers and reference tables. Flexible Heat from France French flexible heater manufacturer Minco has developed a new flexible heater prototype design kit that allows one to test and prototype a heater concept before paying for the built-to-order product. The kit uses lightweight Thermofoil flexible etched Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) repository. During these exercises ITT also demonstrated its Sidehat radio and Wearable Soldier Radio Terminal – the Sidehat (arrow) is a plug-in solution to the Sincgars radio that provides the single-channel radios with a second, JTRScompliant channel. The SRW networks communicated with the Wideband Networking Waveform and the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (Win-T) networks, which signalled the first integrated testing of these waveforms.

Read more in armada International's issue 1/2001

In a military world that is increasingly oriented towards digitisation, command posts are evolving rapidly in terms of command, control, communication and computer systems. Although miniaturisation allows the ’squeezing‘ of an increasing number of C4I assets into smaller spaces – even allowing light vehicles to be used as C2 mobile elements – bigger wheeled or tracked vehicles dedicated to the command function, and able to keep up with vehicles of similar class, are still needed.

The concept of a battlegroup was inherited from naval warfare, with its missiondefined groupings of naval platforms providing a mix of combat and combat support capabilities under unified tactical command (as in the powerful US Navy aircraft carrier battle groups). So with the recent network-centric warfare paradigm, which makes information superiority the decisive edge in information-age network-centric operations.

Read more in armada International's issue 2/2010