The military radio debacle

Absolutely with you on this one. I don't understand enough about radios to know why this is such an obstacle, but the inability to easily communicate on the battlefield is really kind of silly given the technological might of this nation. Apparently the Army has thrown BILLIONS at this and hasn't been able to crack this nut.

I have a lot of respect for engineers, and I have a lot of friends who are way brighter at areas of technical know how than I am. I have to trust the engineers a bit when they point out obstacles, but it still seems like we should be able to do this. We put a man on the moon after all.

Sitting next to me as I write this is a radio that is about the size of 2 Readers Digests stacked one on top of the other. It is able to transmit on multiple bands on AM - USB - LSB & FM on HF , VHF & UHF. It is capable of being connected by one cable to a laptop which enables it to use several modes of digital communications. It has a self contained battery pack for portable operation and is only about 5 lbs. . It's able to communicate locally or around the world given the right conditions and it sells for about $600 retail. The technology is not cutting edge and is avalible off the shelf . These radios are able to be used for satellite communications in several modes on several bands. This equipment has been used by Amateur Radio Operators for years now and there is no reason that it is not being used by our troops in the field. These multi-band, multi-mode radios are in use world wide and would enable our troops to be frequency agile and able to communicate across a broad spectrum. The government needs to take a look at what is avaliable in the market place and adapt it to military spec rather than develop equipment from the ground up. This would make equipment rapidly avaliable to our troops in the field and would be cost effective.

This story is nonsence, told by utterly clueless individuals in my humble opinion. As an Army Communicator for 21 years, I can assure you, the Military has come along way in their battlefield communitcations tactics and equipment. If you don't know how it was prior to Afganastan, you can't know if current battlefield communications is better or worse. The fact is they are better than in any war previous to OIF/OEF.

Try humping your ham equipment around those mountains every day and see how long it lasts. Ruggedness, reliabiliy, and above all, SECURE comm are the real challenges. A common net for inter or even intra service use in all modes is still a pipe dream, despite the manufacturer's claims.

I concur with Don, N2TVP, on this. I have been a ham since I was 12 years old, and I cut my teeth on WWII military radios. When I joined the military in '73, I was appalled at the gear that the Army had. It didn't change while I was there and after I was commissioned in the Air Force, I got to see how crummy their gear was too. It doesn't make any difference how much better communications are now than they were; that is not relevant. What matters is that there still is obviously a big problem. The technology is out there, right now, just like Don said. He also mentioned that it would have to be made more robust, which goes without saying. Security is not an issue, as all this gear is digital compatible, just like he said. It links to a computer seamlessly. Therefore, burst or encoded communications or frequency agility is easy. DOD needs to light a fire under DARPA on this, as this is not rocket science.

@ COMMO - look, I'm not saying it hasn't come a long way, I'm sure it has. I merely try to express some of the issues and frustrations those of us in the field who have to deal with commo gear experienced. Cars of the 1940's were better than cars of the 1920's, but that was no reason to say "They're fine now and don't need improvement."

I think there are some very legitimate criticisms raised by the article about what we should be able to provide for troops in the field, and there's no reason to rest on the laurels and not try to get better just because things are better now than they were in previous conflicts.

This sounds like the issue on arms, optics and ammo. They started buying direct from civilian vendors without a 4 0r 5 year developement period. Why not with commo gear?

Yeah, this is rediculous. I was an airwinger, flyingin helo's over Iraq. Our radios, worked, sometimes. Bad weather, bad signals, or just plain bad radios.. they didn't work. People have this misconception that American military aviation, the aviation tasked with supporting our grunts, has the best equipment available...we don't!!!

Harris corporation has developed a unit that takes care of all these problems. It is called falcon III. The only units that have received them are marines so far as my limited information goes. They have even developed a unit with video. Several thousand units have been ordered.They have developed a charging station that can be built into a humve. Several technicians from harris have been in country working with our troops with the new radios. Other people certainly know more about this than i do. I am surprised that what i consider common knowledge around the rochester area isnt known elsewhere.