The contract award is available online, and while the text omits several details, what can be seen is clear on why Sierra Nevada Corporation is the only contractor that can meet this need. Convenience is one factor. Sierra Nevada developed the software, so it makes sense to continue, and funding a new or redundant development to work in the same way and with the same interoperability would be added cost for no meaningful, tangible benefit.

There is also the matter of specific intellectual property. Sierra Nevada owns the TRAX software. Keeping the TRAX program with the same provider avoids the legal battles and technical issues that could come with trying to replicate it elsewhere. While SOCOM solicited information about an alternative capability, the justification statement argues that whatever that redacted capability is, the decision was made to single track it.

In the field, TRAX translates data protocols, allowing for communication across devices that otherwise couldn’t speak to each other. While military machines from radios up through planes are designed with the knowledge that they will need to be used together, and often built around shared protocols to match, reality is messier than planning, so a reliable software medium is one way to retain a capability even if the equipment on hand isn’t the equipment that was intended.

For all the limitations that might otherwise come with relying on proprietary software, a proprietary software that lets disparate devices communicate with each other is a way around technological path dependent.

“Long term, all systems must be interoperable, survivable against electronic attack, and capable of taking advantage of a wide range of the electromagnetic spectrum,” writes Nick Brunetti-Lihach, a communications officer and faculty advisor at the U.S. Marine Corps Expeditionary Warfare School.

“There is also a need to develop apps and network architecture with built-in security that is operating system agnostic.”

Tactical Radio Application eXtension is one of the programs Brunetti-Lihach specifically cited as a promising example of how to adapt in the future. If SOCOM is drawing the same lessons from the software as the Marine Corps, it’s likely both are on the right TRAX.

GATR Technologies Inc. of Huntsville first won the contract in 2013.

It said in early 2014 that the contract made the antennas more broadly available to the armed services, which already were using them in special operations units.

GATR’s ground-mounted antennas look like giant beach balls with tie-downs to point them in the right direction.

The antenna inside is reflective fabric. Fans keep the air pressure in the top half slightly higher than in the bottom half, pushing the fabric down into the right shape.

The extension brings the contract’s total maximum value to more than $960 million.

It was announced Friday in the Pentagon’s daily list of military contracts.

“MUOS’ acceptance for operational use is an important milestone for the Navy, and it’s one step closer for significant communications improvements for all our forces,” Rear Adm. Carl Chebi, the Navy’s program executive officer for space systems, said in the release.

The Mobile User Objective System (MUOS), built by Lockheed Martin, is a five-satellite constellation, which includes four operational satellites and an on-orbit spare, that works with ground relays to operate like a global military cellular network. The first satellite launched in 2012.

The system can transmit voice, video and mission data on an Internet Protocol based system that can connect to military networks. Users can connect to Department of Defense communications networks such as the Global Information Grid and Defense Switched Network.

The Marine Corps, which has invested heavily in MUOS-portable radios will be the first service to widely deploy MUOS capabiltiies. Initial fielding will begin this fall and is expected to be declared fully operational by summer 2019.

MUOS satellites are designed with dual-capability, which allows DoD to maintain communications on the legacy Ultra High Frequency satellite system while the advanced MUOS Wideband Code Division Multiple Access waveform came online.

WCDMA capability has been demonstrated in environments with submarine antennas and Air Force C-17 in-flight tests.

After the MUOS launch in 2012, WCDMA capability began what’s known as restricted operations in July 2016 so early adopters could gain experience using the system.

We saw it in Hurricane Katrina, for instance, where “first responders were unable to coordinate search and rescue operations efficiently and effectively without communications to guide them … [and] assistance from other states could not be delivered in a timely manner due to lack of communications,” according to a U.S. Army War College analysis.

Now the Army National Guard says it is meeting with success in a pilot effort to leverage military communications capabilities to support domestic emergency disaster response.

Launched in mid-2017, the Disaster Incident Response Emergency Communications Terminal, or DIRECT, provides interoperable communications and data links between the National Guard and first responders during natural disasters, emergencies and civil support operations.

To connect disparate operators, the Army installed commercial internet and phone packages at its tactical network Regional Hub Nodes, leveraging Army’s massive satellite bandwidth in support of emergency responders. These large satellite transport nodes enable the exchange of robust network communication in, out and within theater.

“Leveraging the nodes for commercial transport capabilities enables responders to call any commercial cellphone or landline or obtain internet access, even when commercial towers are down,” said Lt. Col. Mark Henderson, product manager for Network Modernization assigned to Project Manager Tactical Network, which manages DIRECT for the Army.

The Army is using the development operations (DevOps) model to roll out the new system, deploying pilot units on a wide scale in order to gain soldier feedback in support of further roll-outs. Twenty states have received DIRECT since mid-2017, with full deployment to 54 states and territories planned by 2021, Henderson said.

The system pulls together a number of key military technologies to allow for communication over the Army’s tactical network transport layer in places where the infrastructure may have been degraded or destroyed.

The system utilizes the Joint Network Node, a transportable network node that provides high-speed wide area network capability for secure voice, video and data exchange.

Another key element is the Satellite Transportable Terminal, a “highly transportable and mobile satellite system that operates in conjunction with the [Joint Network Node],” Henderson said, adding that the STT is designed to establish secure voice, video and data communications “virtually anytime and anywhere.”

In addition to military technologies, DIRECT also leverages commercial capacity. The system draws on Wi-Fi and commercial 4G LTE cellular to support soldier wireless and cellular handheld requirements. These two together help to cover both near-scale and wider-area connectivity needs.

“Wi-Fi covers a higher density of users in a smaller area, while 4G LTE is used with smartphones and eventually tablets to extend coverage to a greater radius,” Henderson said.

In addition, a suite of tools known as Commercial Coalition Equipment provides the tactical access to commercial internet and telephone services, in a form small enough to fit into a single man-portable transit case. With the CCE, the radio-bridging and voice cross-banding module enables critical links between cell, landline and Voice over Internet Protocol calls, military radios and first responder radios.

“It enables seamless interoperability among disparate radio networks without supplying common radios to all the users, as was done in the past,” Henderson said. “Army National Guardsmen can combine radio and phone networks for crossed communications or create secure forums where various agencies can talk in independent groups.”

Early users say that all these various components, when taken together, enable not just greater reliability but also a far higher degree of interoperable communication than has been available in the past.

“We all use different radios on different frequencies or cell phones. DIRECT allows us to bridge that gap, to tie them together to have one voice and one central hub,” Chief Warrant Officer2 Robert Dobbs, Illinois Army National Guard senior network engineer with the G6 (communications) Tactical Branch – South, said in an Army news release.

“I see this system as being a very valuable asset to the state and the National Guard, enabling us to work hand-in-hand with local responders in the event of a major disaster,” he said.

The service operates two polar icebreakers: the heavy vessel Polar Star and the medium icebreaker Healy. Another heavy ship, the Polar Sea, has been out of action since 2010 due to engine troubles.

This spring, the Coast Guard issued a request for proposals that seeks design and construction details for up to three heavy icebreakers, with a single contract award expected in fiscal year 2019.

Several factors have combined to spark a sense of urgency around the icebreaker fleet. It’s been over 40 years since the United States has recapitalized its heavy polar icebreaker fleet, according to the Government Accountability Office. In that time, a lot has changed.

Russia, with the largest arctic landmass on the planet, now has a fleet of 40 icebreakers, according to Department of Homeland Security documents

At the same time, while climate change may be thinning the polar ice, it may also be accelerating Coast Guard’s polar missions.

Diminishment of polar ice “could lead in coming years to increased commercial ship, cruise ship, and naval surface ship operations, as well as increased exploration for oil and other resources, in the Arctic — activities that could require increased levels of support from polar icebreakers,” notes Ronald O’Rourke, a specialist in naval affairs with the Congressional Research Service.

In the request, the Coast Guard calls out the need for several technological enhancements to meet that mission going forward.

Severely degraded comms

Icebreakers need enhanced communications to deal with the challenges inherent in polar operations.

“Communication is severely degraded at higher latitudes, beyond 65 degrees north and south,” said Eric Nagel, a spokesman for the Coast Guard’s acquisition directorate. “Coast Guard polar icebreakers need to be able to communicate in Polar Regions with a wide range of groups from commercial shipping and recreational boaters to scientific researchers. The polar icebreakers also need to maintain network connectivity with the Department of Homeland Security, Department of Defense and other federal and international partners.”

In addition to high-latitude solutions, the service also is asking industry to provide an enhanced capability to exchange mission essential information. The solicitation calls for an icebreaker that can maintain “near real-time voice and data communications in the clear, protected, and secure modes of operation in polar regions,” Nagel said.

Along with its scientific and commercial missions, the Coast Guard also is a military force, and the next-generation ice breaker will need to be able to work seamlessly with military counterparts.

“Interoperability with the DOD and joint forces is essential to mission completion. Polar icebreakers must be able to project U.S. sovereignty and influence in ice covered surface waters in the high-latitude maritime areas and maintain international peace and stability in the polar regions,” Nagel said.

In general, the Coast Guard is looking for large-bandwidth communication solutions, especially those that can endure extreme environmental conditions. The technology will have to be vibration resistant, or else have incorporated measures that isolate it from jolts as the ship slams through ice.

This comes on top of an already extensive mission, which according to DHS may include: “Rescuing cruise ships that get locked in the ice, clearing the way for natural resource exploration, keeping commerce lanes passable or opening new ones, as well as many other missions. They also must complete the annual 10,000-mile open sea voyage from Seattle to Australia and then down to Antarctica. Once there, the icebreaker must smash through the frozen bay to lead a cargo ship to McMurdo Station with a year’s worth of life-sustaining supplies.”

Despite the highly specific nature of polar work, the Coast Guard has said it can acquire all these capabilities in commercial off the shelf and open architecture equipment and systems, except for technologies to provide communication using military satellites. The resulting polar icebreaker design “will assure year-round access to key regions and will enhance capabilities to independently execute Coast Guard missions across a wide range of operational conditions,” Nagel said.

During the fiscal 2019 budget roll out in February, Army officials at the Pentagon indicated that the service would be accelerating its Joint Battle Command-Platform, which provides friendly forces awareness information known as blue force tracking, as well as encrypted data and faster satellite network connectivity. The change is intended to solve mounted mission command problems across all formations.

The new budget request shows the service is serious about the issue. The Army asked for $431 million for the program in FY2019. That’s up from a total of $283 million during the FY2018 budget. Moreover, the Army plans to procure 26,355 systems as opposed to 16,552 from the FY2018 budget.

However, officials in the program office were careful to note this was not a “plus-up, so to speak,” but an effort to accelerate the fielding of the tracking systems.

C4ISRNET’s Mark Pomerleau recently spoke about the program’s modernization efforts with Col. Troy Crosby, project manager for Mission Command, alongside Lt. Col. Shane Sims, product manager for JBC-P, assigned to Project Mission Command.

C4ISRNET: How should we interpret the FY2019 budget request for this program?

COL. TROY CROSBY: It’s important to understand that there wasn’t necessarily a plus-up.

Really what happened is we shifted already approved authorizations to the left. We’re just expediting sooner.

The Army asked us what we could do to modernize faster … essentially, we went back to them and said give us the funding and the resources to move a lot of those units to the left because every year the G-3/5/7 comes out with this priority list and we weren’t able to get down to that priority list because of funding.

That’s really what you’re seeing with that movement of money from the out years closer in to the left.

C4ISRNET: What led to the decision to baseline the program across formations?

CROSBY: The Army’s looking to standardize their baselines not only on the platforms like JBC-P, but also a similar effort in the command post with software baseline reduction.

Moving to the standard baseline on the platform-side helps with training, readiness and the physical constraints as we can depreciate the older versions of FBCB2/BFT [Force XXI Battle Command Brigade and Below/Blue Force Tracking] out of sustainment.

C4ISRNET: How does standardization help the Army?

CROSBY: Any time you’re greatly standardized in a organization the size of the Army, you’re going to get easier interoperability down at the tactical level.

If Lt. Col. Sims is Sgt. Sims and he is in a unit at Fort Stewart and we were trained on the current systems in the force and then he gets [a permanent change of station] out to Fort Riley, he already has a base of knowledge when he hits the ground on what those systems are because they’re the same across the force. So, the training burden for his new units greatly reduced.

I think it also helps in readiness as units and soldiers move around the battlespace.

The other reason the Army really wants to standardize on JBC-P is, like with all systems in the tactical network, we’re always looking to improve cyber posture, and there were multiple improvements in our cyber posturing that the department felt were relevant to try to accelerate so we could get that capability to the entire force as quickly as possible.

C4ISRNET: In terms of cyber, what are some modernization efforts you’re undertaking to help this platform perform in the more dynamic environments?

CROSBY: I think the best way that we can characterize it is looking to … achieve a cyber posture that allows us to operate both in a counter-insurgency/counterterrorism role and a near-peer adversary role. We’re looking to answer both sides of that coin. Yes, current fight, but we’re also looking to make sure we’re cyber postured for a near-peer.

LT. COL. SHANE SIMS: You can probably draw some conclusions from what you know on the commercial side. Imagine having a computer that’s over 20 years old — that’s where some of our platforms are right now when you’re talking about the FBCB2 that was fielded almost two decades ago.

C4ISRNET: In terms of your FY19 funding, could it be characterized as investing in standards to help increase readiness and lethality?

CROSBY: Very much so. The plus-up kind of touched a couple of areas. On the research and development side, the plus-up helps us in looking at ways to modernize and bring new capability for the blue force tracking network side. We’re really looking to expedite that fielding for better cyber posture.

C4ISRNET: It sounds like standardization is very important from an Army readiness and lethality perspective.

SIMS: When talking JBC-P, there are really three components: the software, the hardware and then the network.

Really, what we’re doing on a couple fronts [is] we’re expediting the fielding to get the hardware out there but that’s going to set the conditions for what we’re doing in the command post with the infrastructure. That same infrastructure is going to reside on our hardware that’s in the platform.

The commanders are in environments where they experience something completely different in the command post than you experience on the platforms.

You hear repeatedly from the commanders, “Can I have the same type of user experience?” Data’s really what we’re addressing with the modernization of the command post and the mounted computing environment. That user experience is going to be one and the same for the commander when he or she is in the command post and then when they get in the vehicle.

That is really what we’re doing with modernization for JBC-P.

C4ISRNET: The National Defense Strategy has stressed prioritization on great power competition. How does JBC-P modernization and standardization fit into that strategy?

CROSBY: The first one is looking to modernize JBC-P mission command on the move at the platform level. How we continue to modernize and field as fast as we can so that we can maintain both that counter-insurgency/counterterrorism fight and near-peer adversaries is one piece of this.

The Army is expected to move forward with procuring two-channel leader radios in the May timeframe. The new contract could be worth nearly $4 billion.

The process was held up due to a protest filed by Persistent Systems, which builds mobile network radio technology, last October. The Government Accountability Office denied the protest earlier this year.

Click here for the latest news from AUSA’s Global Force Symposium.

The radios are expected to have the capability to communicate with Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio (SINCGARS) and Soldier Radio Waveform (SRW). The radio is the successor to the single-channel Rifleman Radio, currently in limited use, but the service is deviating from full scale acquisition of the single-channel radio.

Harris and Thales were both selected to provide single-channel radios to the Army through competitively awarded contracts for lot orders.

Harris and Thales will again compete for orders for the two-channel radio when the Army does move forward by awarding both companies indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracts.

“It remains to be seen what exactly [the Army’s] acquisition strategy is, but in the short-term, we understand they are going to effectively amend the IDIQ for the single-channel radio to provide the leader radio to both Harris and Thales and over time we will compete for those orders,” Dana Mehnert, Harris Corporation’s senior vice president and chief global business development officer, told Defense News in a recent interview.

The Army moved away from procuring a single-channel radio because there are “a lot of advantages” to having both channels instantiated in a single radio, Mehnert said. “You can run two missions at once, so you can be getting live video on one channel and you are communicating, coordinating fires on the other channel.”

Additionally, a two-channel radio has the ability to crossband communications up and down the chain of command, Mehnert said, “so you can have coming in from one source, one waveform or one frequency and you can immediately retransmit it to another person.”

The leader radio is based off a radio the company is already providing to Special Operations.

Harris’ AN/PRC-163 Army Radio design has flexibility to add waveforms and new capabilities down the road. While interoperability with SINCGARS is necessary, as there are a half a million SINCGARS radios out there around the world, so is ensuring the radio can work with the established constellations of satellites such as Mobile User Objective System (MUOS).

“Our perspective is, the key thing is that you get a radio platform that can run the waveforms that you need today and will need in the future,” Mehnert said, whether they are waveforms Harris creates itself or conjured up by the government or a third party. “Your radio should be able to use all of them,” he added.

Room for growth

The leader radio has enough headspace to add capabilities over time, Jeff Smith, Harris’ vice president of business development for the U.S. Army and Special Operations Command, said in the same interview. “This radio has enormous capability to a point we can envision having signals based threat warning capability in the radio, [intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance] video feed module capability and, here in the near future, Iridium SATCOM mission module capability.”

While Harris is focused on the leader radio for the Army, it’s also looking at what it can provide in the future as the Army restructures and re-energizes its network. The service made a drastic move to curb its tactical network – the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical – and prioritize capability that can survive in a contested electromagnetic spectrum.

Harris is confident the Army will move forward with the HMS Manpack radio and the leader radio as key components to the lower tactical network going forward. Harris also provides a new version of the HMS Manpack to the Army.

The Army’s new network strategy emphasizes the desire to recapitalize its high-frequency radios with a next-generation HF radio capability. “We have a brand new next-gen HF radio that is ideally suited for that,” Mehnert said.

Harris even provided the Army’s first Security Force Assistance Brigade deployment to Europe with its AN/PRC-160 HF radio. The radio provides 10 times the data rates of the previous generation radio, Mehnert said.

“That is in the early stages, sort of remains to be seen how they are going to go forward with the program,” he said.

Harris is also watching the Army’s long-awaited next move on what it will do to acquire an airborne-tier capability. The company had developed a radio for the Army’s Small Airborne Networking Radio program based on its ground-based radios, but the service is moving away from procuring SANR in favor of something else.

“We still need a new airborne radio platform,” Mehnert said, adding the company has a multi-channel radio family on both ground-based and airborne platforms, “so we are excited to see what future direction they go on the airborne side.”

The Army submitted a report to Congress last month, as mandated by the 2018 defense authorization bill, that requested the Army’s strategy for “modernizing air-land ad-hoc, mobile tactical communications and data networks.”

Following a highly contentious review, the Army announced last year it would make major changes to its tactical network, the $6 billion program known as Warfighter Information Network, citing operational concerns.

In the report, “The Army’s tactical network modernization strategy,” the service concluded the tactical network hadn’t sufficiently evolved to enable decisive action against a near-peer threat as it’s become too complex, fragile and not sufficiently mobile. Moreover, the report notes the network is vulnerable to cyber attacks and jamming.

As a result, the Army will halt programs or portions of programs that won’t address operational requirements, fix existing programs that are necessary to fulfill the most critical operational shortfalls and pivot to a new acquisition methodology that fosters rapid insertion of new technology.

What this looks like in practical terms is not much different than what the Army charted out previously. The Army will:

– Halt the Mid-Tier Networked Vehicular Radio (MNVR) and Maneuver Control System (MCS) programs realigning funding to higher-priority network modernization efforts

– Halt all procurement of Warfighter Information Network Increment 2 (WIN-T Inc. 2) for the Armor Brigade Combat Teams (ABCT), Army National Guard multi-functional brigades and functional brigades across all components, and;

– Utilize the newly established cross functional teams to conduct rapid prototyping and experimentation.

The big difference in the new strategy, Maj. Gen. Garrett Yee, director of operations and architecture and the acting director of cybersecurity and information assurance in the Army CIO/G-6 office said, is that the new strategy is designed around potential threats.

“This time it’s threat informed,” Yee said at an event hosted by AFCEA NOVA in Falls Church, Virginia. “Cyber threat informed, to be more specific. Electronic warfare threat informed, to be more specific.”

Yee said it’s not that the Army never thought about the threat but based on what they’ve seen in Eastern Europe recently, the new environment “absolutely put a point to that issue.”

Priority fixes

While the Army has charted out longer term plans to leverage prototyping and rapid insertion of the latest technology, a near term threat still must be addressed. These interim fixes will:

• improve command post survivability and mobility;
• integrate tactical network transport;
  
• provide a mission command application suite that resolves incompatibilities between echelons;
  
• improve radio and network survivability against electronic warfare and cyber threats;
  
• and increase joint/coalition interoperability and access to joint fires and close air support
  

Specifically, the Army will address vulnerabilities such as resilient communications in the way of strengthening anti-jam capability – think improving waveforms – and attempting to lower electromagnetic signature; providing greater cyber and electromagnetic signature situational understanding and lastly, reducing vulnerability in contested environments by incorporating automation and intelligence into hybrid commercial/military network solutions to be able to select autonomously in real time the right communications system for the environment when adversaries might be trying to exploit wireless communications connections.

Yee, in describing the approach to building in cybersecurity and resiliency into the network, drew parallels to whether a technology is an asset or a liability.

“If we’re going to build a capability with say it’s Bluetooth enabled, well you just added a new vulnerability. Did you really need that Bluetooth capability or not,” he said. “Did you need to make that thing wireless or not?”

In building a future system, the key will be looking at what is truly needed. “We’re pretty good at asking operators ‘Hey, do you want this? Do you want that ?’ And we end up with a very fancy capability with a lot of features and functions some of which may not be completely necessary but adds to the vulnerability of that capability,” he said. Going forward, the halt, fix, pivot approach is working to bake in security, he said.

WIN-T’s future

The Army will not field the next part of WIN-T, known as WIN-T Inc. 2, beyond fiscal 2018, the strategy says.

The Army will continue to add technology and capability refreshes to the network through virtualization such as improving fixed tactical SATCOM infrastructure.

At present, armor brigade combat teams will remain on at-the-halt connectivity until next-generation, transport-enabled mission command on the move is available.

In terms of WIN-T Inc 2 – the on the move capability – the Army will procure components for active duty Infantry BCTs and Stryker BCTs while also leveraging the cross functional team in parallel to identify other capabilities that are more better for operations against near peer threats.

The National Guard, Army Reserve or armor BCTs won’t get Inc. 2, the strategy says, instead receiving next-generation on-the-move mission command capability when it becomes available.

The DoD’s chief weapons inspector deemed elements of WIN-T Inc. 2’s light version to be survivable and stand up to cyber attacks.

Persistent Systems, which builds mobile network radio technology, filed a protest on Oct. 12, 2017, challenging the Army’s request for proposals to acquire 2-channel handheld leader radios.

At question was a requirement that the radios have the capability to communicate with Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio (SINCGARS) and Soldier Radio Waveform (SRW) without a secondary radio. This new independent two-channel leader radio is the successor to the single-channel Rifleman Radio, currently in limited use. The Rifleman Radio exclusively uses SRW, which soldiers use to transmit vital voice and data over short distances, within teams. For voice communications between teams or further back to other assets, soldiers usually rely on a separate radio that runs SINCGARS.

In order to access SINCGARS, Persistent’s radio, known as the MPU5, must be routed through a separate fielded radio, either a manpack or one mounted on a nearby vehicle. Routing the communications through the mounted radio, the company argues, allows for better range and stronger performance than merely relying on the strength of a handheld radio. The MPU5 also ditches SRW in favor of a mobile ad hoc networking waveform, which the company insists is a far superior waveform for transmitting data.

These deviations from the details of the Army’s proposal, however, led the service to deem Persistent’s MPU5 radio unacceptable.

In response, the company argued that the Army’s insistence on procuring a single independent radio is unduly restrictive of competition and ultimately counterproductive in reaching their larger goal of improving the service’s tactical networking systems. According to Persistent, sufficient market research would have revealed the superiority of their radios.

“Throughout the entire process, we were never once afforded an opportunity to meet with the Army to describe our proposed solution,” said Leslie Hulser, director of programs at Persistent Systems LLC to C4ISRNET. “[The Army] was always stubbornly committed to a two-channel version of Rifleman Radio that would run the SINCGARS and SRW waveforms.”

The GAO denied the protest Jan. 16.

“The Army has reasonably identified the need for its requirement that the radios be able to independently and autonomously communicate without the need to rely on secondary radio infrastructure,” GAO General Counsel Thomas Armstrong wrote.

The Army had previously signaled it would award contracts to Harris Corp. and Thales to produce the next-generation of the Rifleman Radio, but appeared to open the contract up for competition when it requested information on a two-channel radio capable of handling both data and voice communications. Persistent maintains that competitive appearance was entirely for show.

“As far as we know, the only people who ever met with the Army were the incumbent contractors who had worked on the now-defunct Rifleman Radio program,” Hulser said in the statement, referring to Harris Corp. and Thales.

The first brigade to receive the fielding of both the WIN-T Tactical Communications Node-Lite (TCN-L) and the Network Operations Security Center-Lite (NOSC-L) is the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division at Schofield Barracks, Hawaii, Paul Mehney, a spokesman in the Army’s Program Executive Office Command Control Communications-Tactical, told Defense News.

The unit previously was equipped with the oldest version of the tactical network — WIN-T Increment 1 — which only works at-the-halt. WIN-T Inc. 2 and TCN-L provide on-the-move communications capability.

Elements of the 101st Air Assault Division also have TCN-L and NOSC versions.

The service decided to halt WIN-T Increment 2 procurement as it increasingly contemplated having to fight against peer adversaries, particularly as Russia continues to behave aggressively and unpredictably on the Eastern European flank.

WIN-T Inc. 2 is too heavy, too cumbersome and easily detectable in an electromagnetic spectrum. WIN-T was integrated on 5-ton tactical vehicles, but to make the tactical network more mobile, the Army moved WIN-T onto a Humvee, which can be sling loaded by a CH-47 Chinook cargo helicopter across the battlefield or rolled onto an Air Force C-130 aircraft.

TCN-L provides beyond-line-of-sight and high-bandwidth line-of-sight network communication while moving in a convoy or at the “quick halt” and can also be positioned at the stationary command post. The NOSC monitor allows soldiers to manage and provide enhanced security to the tactical network.

WIN-T TCN-L and NOSC went through an operational test at the Network Integration Evaluation in July 2017 at Fort Bliss, Texas.

The 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne Division from Fort Campbell, Kentucky, conducted the NIE and subsequently the operational tests for the two elements of the Army’s tactical network.

The soldiers’ reviews at the NIE of both TCN-L and NOSC were mostly favorable.

[Rethinking the battlefield: Army drives toward lighter, smaller, mobile systems at NIE]

And the latest Director of Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E) report reflects those views.

The Army’s chief weapons tester Robert Behler reported that soldiers using both WIN-T TCN-L and NOSC were able to “plan, install, operate and maintain a WIN-T network under operationally realistic conditions.”

NOSC tools were deemed effective except for the “network operations summary board” which provided delayed network information and “did not support network monitoring,” according to the report. But the system as a whole was otherwise operationally suitable.

The brigade transported the systems by CH-47F in a “realistic tactical environment,” the report states.

The report advocates for better training for both systems and notes that soldiers asked for more in-depth training “to include advanced theory of operations, system operations, troubleshooting and software use.”

WIN-T Increment 2, was deemed survivable in the operational test, according to the report, and was able to stand up against cyberattacks. The system “demonstrated a robust cyber network defense to protect against an operationally realistic cyber threat opposing force,” the report states.

“The virtual firewall and improved software tools were effective,” it reads, adding the program provided one expert field service representative to implement improved cybersecurity.

The report suggests the Army either has to have a field service representative in the field to maintain the improved level of cybersecurity or train a Signal soldier to “accomplish these complex tasks.”