ARLINGTON, Va. (Army News Service, March 30, 2011) -- The Joint Tactical Radio Systems Airborne Maritime Fixed, or JTRS AMF Program Office is planning to demonstrate the ability of its software-programmable radios.
Voice, video, images and data will be sent across multiple platforms in real-time - including to and from an Army Longbow Apache helicopter, Air Force C-130 airplane and U2 spy plane, JTRS program officials said.
The AMF demonstration - slated for later this year at White Sands Missile Range, N.M. - will network a host of aircraft together to one another and to ground nodes using high bandwidth waveforms such as Soldier Radio Waveform, or SRW, and Wideband Networking Waveform, known as WNW.
"We've developed a strategy where we like to pull technologies out of the developmental process and put them in a more realistic environment - an operationally relevant environment," said Col. Raymond Jones, JTRS AMF program manager. "This is designed to stress the system as part of the developmental process to gain confidence."
The JTRS AMF Program Office plans to begin producing radios during the second quarter of FY13, Jones said. The two-channel, encrypted AMF radios will be capable of transmitting information with SRW, WNW, UHF Satcom, MUOS (Mobile User Objective System), Link 16 and VHF/UHF line of sight, Jones explained.
The upcoming demonstration will push the envelope of technological possibility to determine the ranges at which AMF can operate successfully, he said.
"A scenario might be an Apache identifies something on the ground and passes the information to a C130 or U2 -- which passes the information to another aircraft and ultimately down to a ground station," Jones said. "Did I cover the area the size of Afghanistan with one radio' Will I have a significant range extension that can create that over-the-horizon capability' That starts to mitigate the need for satellites."
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