{"id":51354,"date":"2023-10-06T12:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-10-06T12:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2023\/10\/06\/us-army-seeks-cheap-user-friendly-radios-amid-network-changes\/"},"modified":"2026-08-08T18:55:02","modified_gmt":"2026-08-08T18:55:02","slug":"us-army-seeks-cheap-user-friendly-radios-amid-network-changes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/one.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/land\/2023\/10\/06\/us-army-seeks-cheap-user-friendly-radios-amid-network-changes\/","title":{"rendered":"US Army seeks cheap, user-friendly radios amid network changes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 The U.S. Army plans to buy a large quantity of relatively cheap, intuitive radios for future soldier networking amid a move away from brigade-centric fighting and a related communications overhaul concentrated on the much larger division.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The service\u2019s Program Executive Office Command, Control and Communications-Tactical is eyeing the end of the year to publish a request for proposals on batches of the low-cost, single-channel radios. Such user-friendly gear could accelerate training and adoption across the service as well as ease international collaboration, according to Col. Shermoan Daiyaan<\/a>, a project manager at PEO C3T.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSome of these radios are down to the size of a cellphone. Some of the radios actually look like cellphones,\u201d Daiyaan told C4ISRNET. \u201cSo we\u2019re reducing size, weight and power, and we\u2019re making the radios easier to train.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf we have an easier radio to train, and an easier radio to maintain, now we can field faster. If I have to give three days of training and I can get it down to one hour, that\u2019s another unit I can move to quicker as we field the Army,\u201d Daiyaan added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

PEO C3T published an initial request for information for the radios following Technical Exchange Meeting 9<\/a>, or TEM9, in Nashville, Tennessee, in late 2022. The exchange meetings bring together Army leadership, acquisition officials and hundreds of defense industry players to discuss soldier needs \u2014 namely communications kit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several companies responded to the posting. Testing followed with the help of the 25th Infantry Division based in Hawaii.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe first thing we did is we took, I want to say, six companies out to a jungle field training exercise with the 25th. And what we did, to drive home the idea of [simplicity of] use, was we gave them one hour to train the soldiers. No classroom time; they did it right there in the jungle,\u201d Daiyaan said. \u201cPhase two of it was here at Garuda Shield<\/a>, where we took another subset of those radios and allowed the soldiers to operate them actually in Indonesia, in the jungle exercises.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\t