ITT Aerospace/Communications Division (booth A1019) has announced an agreement with Raytheon under which the two companies will develop and market two communications products designed to bring many of the benefits of advanced digital radio to the battlefield years in advance of the planned deployment of the US Defence Department’s Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS).
The two new offerings - MicroLight-3G and the ASIP-E Sidehat upgrade for the long-established SINCGARS tactical radio standard – have a common technical basis and are designed to operate in the same demanding tactical environment.
“We got together with Raytheon to develop these two systems and offer them to the Defence Department in response to what we were hearing from soldiers in the field,” says Willis Brown, director of international business development for ITT Aerospace/Communications. “They have heard of the benefits promised by the future JTRS – plentiful bandwidth, robust networking, multiple channels – and they want them now. Our two new products will give them much of that on the basis of hardware that’s already in general service.”
The ASIP-E Sidehat upgrade adds a “side hat” - a small UHF expansion module – to the existing SINCGARS ASIP (Advanced Systems Improvement Programme) standard. It allows soldiers using vehicle-mounted and man-packed SINCGARS for the first time to carry out simultaneous voice and data communications.
Source: Flight Daily News