The Army’s tactical radio program is off and rolling forward again – promising to deliver game-changing capability to the warfighter after a rigorous evaluation of all compliant vendors.
On April 3, the Army released the Draft RFP for the Handheld, Manpack and Small Form Factor (HMS) Manpack, following the January Request for Proposals for the Rifleman Radio, the two foundational components of the Army’s Tactical Radio Program. These RFPs come after months of careful consideration by Army planners and procurement experts on what the warfighter needs and what it will take to achieve challenging technology requirements. With these procurements, the Army is “walking the walk” with DoD‘s Better Buying Power (BBP) and demonstrating the powerful benefits of full, open competition to Defense.
In the spring of 2013, the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Logistics and Technology (USD AT&L) released a new acquisition strategy for the terrestrial portion of the HMS program that permits all compliant products to compete, even radios developed by companies without the benefit of congressionally appropriated R&D funding. The goal of this new strategy was to get the best radio possible for the warfighter and the best value for the taxpayer.
Last June, after the completion of the HMS Manpack Follow-On Operational Test (FOT&E), Army Lt. Gen. H.R. McMaster, then a two-star and commander of the Maneuver Center of Excellence at Ft. Bragg, recommended that HMS Capability Sets 15 and 16 be suspended because of concerns about the Manpack radio‘s weight, size, and range, among other performance issues.
The end result of the Army’s review and deliberation over several months is recognition that central to achieving challenging technical requirements—such as a threshold weight of 12 pounds (moving to 8 pounds), a 10-kilometer range, and 24 hours of battery life—is the need to give the industry incentive to invest in the substantial R&D it will take to get the Manpack radio to meet more demanding requirements.
In other words, stripping weight and increasing range and duration can happen. It just takes time and R&D investment, and we all know that investment takes place when there‘s a viable market (i.e., suppliers have confidence that the customer will acquire a sufficient number of units over a long enough duration to justify investment).
In the technology space, achieving better, faster and lower cost capability happens more quickly when there is ample competition and market certainty. By moving forward now, the Army is another step closer to achieving its end-goal radio.
As I said in January in welcoming the Rifleman RFP, the recipe for success includes three things: getting the right people to the table, opening dialog with industry in the appropriate ethical and iterative ways, and acknowledging that progress will be step-by-step as the technology improves over time.
Now that the Army is moving forward on the Manpack RFP, there is greater certainty than ever before that the competitive market will rise to meet the challenge.
Dennis Moran is vice president of government business development at Harris RF Communications, and retired Army MG/former Joint Staff J6.
