FORT HUACHUCA, Ariz. -- The U.S. Army Electronic Proving Ground (USAEPG) recently completed a vendor qualification event for a new Army radio system.
USAEPG has been the long-time Army's designated developmental tester for Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance, or C4ISR, systems which include radios and telecommunication systems. However, the Army's test needs for this new radio system, the Soldier Radio Waveform -- Appliqué, or SRW-A radio, used vendor-provided systems, called non-developmental items (NDI).
SRW-A radios are vehicle-mounted radios that provide tactical units and dismounted Soldiers the ability to securely communicate with their higher-headquarters and surrounding units using the Soldier Radio Waveform. This new waveform is tailored for the increasing need of data on the battlefield.
Typically, Army-developed systems go through a Developmental Test, or DT, phase, which tests systems to ensure they perform well outside of an engineering or laboratory setting and to reduce the risk for Army acquisition before moving to an operational test event, often involving Soldiers in a field setting. However, NDIs are treated a little differently than those Army-developed systems.
"It is different than a typical DT," said Tyson Vander Linden, the USAEPG test officer-in-charge for the SRW-A vendor qualification event.
While NDIs may not go through a traditional DT phase, Army acquisition professionals still need performance and reliability data about the candidate systems and that evaluation data is often collected through vendor qualification events. USAEPG is able to offer the Army these types of vendor qualification events, as it has with this SRW-A radio program, he explained
Fort Huachuca provides an ideal test bed for radio telecommunications, because of the over 2,400 square miles of range space and unusually quiet radio spectrum created by the mountains that ring the area.
Despite the expansive range space of Fort Huachuca, testing the SRW-A radios was both a schedule and logistical challenge, given that the test involved four vendors that needed to be separated to ensure a fair qualification event according to Vander Linden.
"It was a pretty expeditious request for us to execute this test," he said. "All the evaluators, the AEC [Army Evaluation Center], TCM [TRADOC Capabilities Manager] folks, the guys back at the Pentagon wanted to see a very comprehensive test.
"You have a timescale you have to meet and you have to balance between all four vendors. You don't want to give another vendor an unfair advantage over the others."
Overcoming these challenges ultimately is to collect data, to inform the decision making process with Army acquisition professionals.
"The data being collected is using standard EPG data collection systems," said Peter Shreve, the USAEPG lead data reduction specialist for the vendor qualification event.
The data collection systems are three-fold in nature. There is an external data collection module, collecting evaluation data external to the radios. There is an embedded collection module that collects data on the radio itself. Finally, there is a system where testers may manually enter data, based on the data needs of AEC, he explained.
The evaluation data proved to be a logistical challenge as well, as the data is usually processed at the test site. Because the SRW-A vendor qualification used two sites to ensure vendor separation, this required the shuttling of data between test sites and data reduction and analysis sites, he added.
The SRW-A vendor qualification comes at a time when USAEPG is very busy testing many different systems, not just in radios and communications, but also in intelligence and electronic warfare. The strain has stretched the workforce, but the workforce has met the challenge.
"People that you've been working with for several years, all of a sudden you put them in this new position and they just excel in them and perform beyond a level of your expectation," Vander Linden said. "You think you have a good bead on somebody and then they exceed your expectations."
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