17 Jun 02. The Team FUTARA JTRS consortium consisting of Raytheon, ITT, TRW, General Dynamics and Thales gave an upbeat presentation at Eurosatory regarding the Teams likelihood of winning the US JTRS software radio programme in competition with the Boeing Team which includes Rockwell and BAE SYSTEMS.
Dick Hitt from Raytheon Systems told BATTLESPACE that he sees the JTRTS market as huge. “We expect JTSRS to provide a $6bn market world-wide with the US DoD providing over $3bn, Europe and coalition forces over $2bn and other markets $1bn by 2007.”
The award of the Cluster 1 segment is expected this week. From 1999 to 2002 the JTRS Joint Program Office has develop the architecture definition, design and validation of prototypes and independent industry validation. The software will be housed in the JTRS JPO reuse Library which will be available for all contractors bidding the other three clusters. The total requirement is for 260,000 radios.
The Cluster One segment includes the development and supply of 107,000 vehicular radios; Cluster Two the hand-held and manpacks; Cluster Three Maritime and Fixed facilities; Cluster Four Air Force and Naval Airborne.
Cluster One has a requirement to install radios in 101,000 Army vehicles, 4,800 Army Aircraft and 560 Air Force Vehicles. “Team Futara has worked together to produce what we hope is a winning bid for Cluster One,” Hitt said, “We now have to work together to develop the best industrial solution. This will mean team members ITT and General Dynamics competing for the production contracts of JTRS over a three year period. In addition it is vital that production coincides with the introduction of FCS and Objective Force Warrior in the US, any delay would cause huge integration costs.”
For the future Hitt said, “We believe that we have the combined solution for the next three clusters. Together we have fielded 65% of all US tactical radios, ITT is a world leader in networking technologies and produces the SINCGARS radio for the US and ADR+ for the UK, Raytheon leads the integration, waveform development and brings extensive EPLRS capability, TRW provides the airborne segment with the Apacahe, JSF and F-22 radios, General Dynamics in particular provides our team with a huge advantage in its expertise in DMR, the first software defined radio for the US Navy, Thales provides extensive HF capabilities and a link to international markets whilst ViaSAt provides Link 16 expertise and SAIC network design capabilities.”
For the future Hitt confirmed that the Team had been discussing JTRS with the UK BOWMAN IPT. The UK said that that it was not going to wait for JTRS and would move forward once the technology became available. The crypto requirements of different nations could prove a hurdle to interoperability but Hitt believed that this would be overcome by nations willingness to join JTRS. If nations don’t provide crypto information, interoperability becomes a problem for that nation, not JTRS.
Thales appears to be the most likely beneficiary of JTRS technology for the European market and a joint MoU is expected to be signed between governments and the two companies allowing technology transfer and IPR (not confirmed) availability outside the USA.