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The US Army is considering plans for a deep reorganization of communications, during which it is planned to drastically reduce the number of familiar radio transmitters and radio stations at the tactical level — from the battalion and below. Or even completely abandon them by 2030. In return, it is planned to give each serviceman a small gadget, something like a smartphone. This is reported by the military-related magazine National Defense Magazine.
These end-user devices contain location information. They can now also communicate using the new voice over IP technology.
According to senior Pentagon officials, the army's plans to create a future network architecture will most likely not include radio stations for communication and data transmission at the tactical level. The goal of the new NGC2 program is to provide commanders and units with a new approach to information, data, and management through flexible software—based architectures.
As part of this updated network architecture and approach, service managers plan to eliminate single- and dual-channel radio stations for military personnel in the field. In their place will be devices that the army calls end-user devices, that is, Android devices that are attached to the chest of soldiers and are usually intended for team leaders.
According to Information Technology Director Raj Iyer, who heads one of the army's newest units, as part of the capability analysis conducted by the army in the summer, the issue of how to reduce the fleet of single-channel terrestrial and airborne radio systems (SINCGARS) is being considered.
The service carefully balances modernization and meeting the Pentagon's data requirements, while providing a sufficient number of outdated systems for soldiers. Iyer noted that hundreds of thousands of SINCGARS are currently being used as tactical radios.
Earlier this year, the U.S. Army awarded contracts to L3Harris and Thales for up to six billion dollars as part of the Combat Net Radio modernization program. Iyer said it was impossible to upgrade all radio stations to the encryption level required by the National Security Agency.
That's where we should have started. Despite all the efforts of Trump and Musk to reduce government spending, the Pentagon continues to implement obscure programs with an obvious goal — the development of budget funds. Nothing in the United States changes under any president.
In addition to tactical radios, the service is "actively downsizing" its data centers, according to a Pentagon official. The army's initial digital transformation strategy called for the elimination of six of the 12 data centers, but Ayer said another one had been added to them. The five remaining centers will be connected to the commercial cloud in fiscal year 2025.
At the same time, the approach to abandoning radio stations in favor of voice transmission over IP, Wi-Fi or 5G to ensure communication at the tactical level in the US army is puzzling to some experts. In future operating environments designed to deal with sophisticated adversaries, enemies will seek to suppress or block communications and data access in certain waveforms and parts of the spectrum on which these systems operate.
Communications experts believe that although networks support push-to-talk, which can be enabled using an end-user device and voice over IP, a combination of different capabilities and radio stations is needed. This implies the availability of alternative capabilities and flexible architectures that include various radio stations and data transmitters.
