Military Review English Edition July-August 2016 | Page 93

FIXING NETWORKS

JTRS LEGACY WAVEFORMS

- Bowman Very High-Frequency (VHF)
- Collection Of Broadcasts From Remote
Assets (COBRA)
- Enhanced Position Location Reporting
System (EPLRS)
- Have Quick II
- High-Frequency Single
sideband/Automatic link establishment
(HF SSB/ALE)
- NATO Standardization Agreement
5066 (HF 5066)
- Link 16
- Single-Channel Ground and Airborne
Radio System (SINCGARS)
- Ultra High-Frequency Demand
Assigned Multiple Access Satellite
communications (UHF DAMA SATCOM)
181/182/183/184
- Ultra High-Frequency Line-of-Sight
Communications System (UHF LOS)
- Very High-Frequency Line-of-Sight
Communications System (VHF LOS)

MOBILE AD HOC NETWORKING
WAVEFORMS (MANETS)

- Wideband Networking Waveform
(WNW)
- Soldier Radio Waveform (SRW)
- Mobile User Objective System
(MUOS)–Red Side Processing

(Graphic by Arin Burgess, Military Review)

Figure1. JTRS Legacy Waveforms,
Ad Hoc Networking Waveforms,
and Network Enterprise Services
“associated with dismounted operations.”9 For context, in the most current active and National Guard
brigade-combat-team numbers, there are thirty-five
infantry brigades, sixteen armored brigades, and nine
Stryker brigades. Yet, even within armored and Stryker
MILITARY REVIEW  July-August 2016

brigades, infantry squad leaders up through company
commanders have to be prepared to dismount. So, how
then does the vehicle-mounted Manpack radio meet
64 percent of the program requirements? Perhaps it is
time to update the concept of operations that drives
analysis of leader radio requirements.
Additionally, the Army neglects to adequately
address the radio’s user interface issue with the range
issue. One defense-oriented website, the Defense
Industry Daily, reported, “Its user interface is an
impediment.”10 Indeed. To use the radio system, the
network is built on a laptop first with a name assigned
to each radio using an ISP-equivalent naming convention. Then, the laptop joins with each radio so that the
network program can be physically uploaded.
This complex and time-consuming task becomes
operationally untenable when the task organization
changes during an operation. To attach or detach an
element, or to communicate with a diverted enabler, is
not a matter of simply uploading the network to new
users. Instead, the system is designed in such a manner
that it must be completely rebuilt and uploaded again
into every radio in the network.
Fortunately, every radio in the network is actually not very many. Though the carrying capacity
of the network—the number of radios on the same
frequency communicating and networking with each
other—is advertised to be a maximum of forty-five, it
is necessary to keep the number of networked radios
to fewer than twenty-eight. More than that begins to
bog down the data transfer rate. And, with more than
thirty-five radios on the network there is a danger of
crashing it.
How has the Army come to a point where our
twenty-first-century radio is twice the weight, half the
range, a battery burden, and a burn hazard as compared
to our twentieth-century radio? The answer resides in
well-intentioned but overly complicated requirements
that result in industry trying to comply with exceedingly complex JTRS standards and National Security
Agency (NSA) Type 1 encryption.

JTRS Standards and NSA-Certified
Encryption
Compatibility with legacy systems is among the
requirements that industry must accomplish to meet
the JTRS standards and field a new radio. Legacy radio
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