JTRS JPEO Update: From "On the Rocks" To "On the Air"

Army, May 2008 by Gourley, Scott R

Three years after its reorganization under a Joint program executive office (JPEO) structure, the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) is following parallel near-term and far-term approaches to optimize the delivery of critical capabilities to warfighters today and tomorrow.

According to Dennis Bauman, Joint program executive officer for JTRS, the program has undergone significant changes over the past three years and is now enjoying tremendous support from what Bauman terms "the highest levels" in both the Department of Defense and Congress.

"The reason we are is because of the importance of JTRS to the Department of Defense," Bauman said.

Noting that JTRS was critical in delivering DoD's sought-after network-centric capabilities "out to 'the tactical edge,'" Bauman explained, "That capability is more than a cell phone network with cell towers. We don't have cell towers out there. We can't use BlackBerry technology, for many reasons. In fact, we have to do mobile ad hoc networking from the command center or the command vehicle out to the tactical edge. That is the significance of JTRS, and that's why Congress is so interested in it and why the Department of Defense is so interested in it. That's the first reason it's so significant."

As his second through fourth key aspects of JTRS criticality, Bauman cited: solving traditional interoperability problems among different DoD components; saving procurement dollars through the use of a new, more competitive business model; and eliminating the current reliance on overhead satellites to provide reach-back communications.

"Three years ago, JTRS was 'on the rocks,'" Bauman acknowledged. "But it has turned around. What we had three years ago was a loose federation of five ACAT 1 [Acquisition Category 1] programs that were run, basically, by the services. And they were only loosely federated because it was not a Joint entity and there was no single management structure." Congress then requested that the services centralize the management model. "The Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics [USD AT&L] at the time was Mike Wynne, now Secretary of the Air Force. He wrote a report back to Congress and [essentially] said, 'We're going to fix this. We're going to stand up a centralized PEO, have all the PMs report to that PEO and have that PEO report to USD AT&L.' That's what we did three years ago, and that's how JPEO-the Joint PEO for JTRS-was born."

Under the JPEO structure, the JTRS program has adopted what Bauman termed "a unique enterprise approach."

"By enterprise, I mean that we are looking at rolling out 'a capability' for the Department of Defense. Now that capability consists of several different form factors, but it's still the same basic capability: a Joint enterprise capability," he said.

Bauman noted that the JTRS enterprise approach features both short-term and long-term aspects.

"The short-term aspect of this is that three years ago, when the JPEO stood up and we did an analysis of where we were, we found that each one of these ACAT 1 programs was delivering everything at once. The whole capability that was in the 800-page CDD [capabilities development document] was to be delivered at one time for each of the then 'clusters.' Well, that's a recipe for disaster in a highly technical development program. What we did then was turn all of the programs into 'increments.' For the entire enterprise we are now taking an incremental approach. As a result, we have defined 'Increment One,' which is what we're building now: a subset, although a very significant subset, of what was in this 800-page CDD," he said.

"The second thing we've done was to focus on acquisition fundamentals. It's like any baseball manager or football coach who probably tells his players: 'Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals,'" Bauman said, identifying those fundamentals as requirements management, risk management and contract management.

Long-term aspects of the JTRS enterprise approach focus on a new business model for the acquisition process, which maintains competition and cost benefits. As a concrete example of these benefits, Bauman noted the Army's recent purchase of almost 40,000 handheld radio systems.

Noting that the former cluster organization had produced a JTRS Enhanced MBITR (multiband inter/intra team radio)-or JEM-handheld radio, under the auspices of U.S. Special Operations Command, Bauman explained, "Thales won that competition several years ago, and they built the JEM radio-a single-channel handheld software-defined radio, into which you can instantiate multiple waveforms. It has embedded programmable crypto, certified by the National security Agency [NSA], and it has demonstrated interoperability through JITC [Joint Interoperability Test Command] testing. Those are four very fundamental JTRS characteristics. And that is what we call a JTRS-approved radio; and it passed operational testing a year-and-a-half ago.

"Normally we would have gone into production and sole-sourced that to Thales, on the old business model. In fact, that was what was planned. Instead, we had another competitor on the market, Harris Corporation, which had built a similar radio with similar capabilities, on their own money. We were aware of that, so ... we want to compete in production-and we're in the production phase of this single-channel capability. About nine months ago, we awarded a multiple award indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity contract. And it was a full and open competition for any company that could bring in a single-channel JTRS-approved radio that met the basic things I mentioned earlier. And we awarded to Thales, with their JEM radio, and we awarded to Harris, with their Falcon III handheld," he said.