Military Review English Edition July-August 2016 | Page 92

The Current State of the Army’s
Tactical Radios
At present, the tactical radio cure to the networking dilemma is not encouraging. Maj. Gen. H.R.
McMaster, then commander of the Army Maneuver
Center of Excellence at Fort Benning, Georgia,
was quoted in a June 2015 article about problems
with the AN/PRC-155 Joint Tactical Radio System
( JTRS) Handheld, Manpack, and Small-form Fit
(HMS) radio set:
The Maneuver Center of Excellence considers the dismounted HMS Manpack radio
unsuitable for fielding to brigade combat
teams …. A radio that is heavier and provides less range while creating a higher logistics demand does not make our units more
operationally capable. Additionally, any
radio that places our soldiers at risk of being
burned is unacceptable.3
According to the same 2015 article, from the
Defense Industry Daily website, HMS Manpack has
many problems:
The Radio’s seventeen pounds makes it twice
as heavy as previous SINCGARS radios, its
effective range is less than half as far (3 km
vs. 7 km), its two batteries last less than 20
percent as long (six hours vs. thirty-three
hours), and its user interface is an impediment. Adding to the fun, overheating is
hazardous to the carrying soldier if it’s taken
out of the case against recommendations.4
However, this assessment is generous compared to
the reality. The three-kilometer range is a stretch; perhaps the radio could achieve that distance in the open
deserts at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico,
or Fort Bliss, Texas, but not in the forested hills of Fort
Benning, Georgia. It would be fortunate to get three
hundred meters in the complex terrain the infantry
often finds itself in.
So, in August 2014, the Maneuver Center’s
Maneuver Battle Lab began to explore networking
concepts and to exercise a cellular network and lower
standards of encryption for tactical communications.
For many, it was assumed network integration exercises (NIEs) would work out the bugs of the radio
over time. However, the director of operational test
and evaluation, J. Michael Gilmore, found the AN/
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PRC-155 was “not operationally effective when
employed in dismount operations” at NIE 14.2.5
Likewise, he commented on the Rifleman radio
during the same NIE:
When employed during the first phase of
Nett Warrior initial operational test and
evaluation at NIE, the AN/PRC-154A
Rifleman [radio] provided good voice communications ‘until a terrain feature blocked
line-of-sight,’ and ‘soldiers had problems
with the radio battery,’ including high battery
temperatures that ‘caused first-degree burns
and discomfort. Sixty percent of the soldiers
reported that the temperature was in excess
of 120 degrees Fahrenheit.’6
In January 2015 the Army responded to the report,
defending both the radios and results of NIE 14.2,
asserting that the Manpack “was successfully used to
make voice calls and transport data throughout the
test, with feedback indicating that the radio supported
communications needed to accomplish the mission.”7
Obviously, these two conflicting positions indicate a
great disconnect with the development of our family
of networking radios.

The Fact of the Matter
The physics of the problem dictate that a networking
radio is going to be short range. Unfortunately, when
authorities knowledgeable of the science of radio waves
take issue with the radio, they are dismissed as having
a lack of understanding regarding its range limitations.
Consequently, such dismissal represents a missed opportunity to address root-cause problems.
Yes, the networking radio needs to be short range,
but not as short as we are currently experiencing;
it merely needs to be optimized for the networking
waveform currently being use d. Any new equipment or
technologies are going to have some bugs to work out,
but changing to longer antennas is only a helpful step
toward a greater solution.
To further compound the networking radio issue, in November 2014 the Army reported that the
vehicle-mounted Manpack met the mounted-leader
requirements, which account for 64 percent of total
program requirements.8 The report indicated that the
Army would review requirements and technology
to improve the radios for the remaining 36 percent
July-August 2016  MILITARY REVIEW