WASHINGTON — The US Army is exploring the ability for US and allied tactical radios to talk to one another, and held proof-of-concept testing during multinational exercises in Europe, ahead of developing formal requirements.

In January, 2,000 soldiers from five nations — Canada, Hungary, the Netherlands, the UK and US — used 12 twelve different kinds of radios to test a half-pound device called a tactical voice bridge at the called Allied Spirit exercises. The device attached to the radios, and captured and retransmitted signals between radios with the same level of encryption.

"What we're trying to get at now is to be able to pick up that microphone, key it and be able to talk from one country to another country's radio set, and it's a lot harder than it sounds," said US Army Col. Adam Loveless, chief of staff at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center (JMRC) in Hohenfels, Germany, which hosted the exercise.

If, during the Iraq war, a commander wanted to pass information to his Iraqi counterpart, Loveless said, he worked through a team of US troops equipped with US radios and embedded in the Iraqi command center. Direct radio comms with an allied military was considered technically impossible.

The Army's operating concept, unveiled last year, casts the service as the backbone for joint and multinational operations on land, yet in the area of communications, it has been far outstripped by the pace of commercial devices.

The Army's signals directorate's latest guidance for simplifying the network, and resolving issues from across the force, includes mission command interoperability with partner militaries and enhances the joint force's interoperability with interagency and coalition partners, according to Gary Wang, the Army deputy chief information officer/G-6.

The Army is already making strides in this area but has some ways to go. In 2014, the Army's Network Integration Evaluation at Fort Bliss, Texas, included a command post equipment package that marries a 4G LTE/Wi-Fi system with National Security Agency encryption. solution. Its network stack can be rapidly reconfigured to support either coalition operations or civil support, such as first responders in disaster relief efforts.

"The system's integrated radio-bridging and cross-banding solutions provide seamless interoperability among disparate radio nets that previously could not communicate," according to an Army news release. "The need for this type of capability was made evident by communication lapses such as those that occurred during Hurricane Katrina relief when first responders could not communicate between agencies."

US Army Europe has asked to see if it is in the realm of the possible to bridge voice communications with foreign partners. , and to To that end, the Army is exploring the technical challenges of with physically bridging voice waveforms and coalition waveforms. Whether or not it is technically feasible, the Army must still develop policies and doctrine to govern it, all subject to National Security Agency approval.

Meanwhile, the doctrinal and material communities are helping define requirements dealing with not only voice bridging but how coalition partners can share mission command information over the network.

The Brigade Modernization Command plans to look at some of these challenges during its Network Integration Evaluation 16.1 taking place this fall, which is slated to have an international flavor, though an Army official close to the effort says the gear being evaluated may not field for several years.

Subordinate to US Army Europe, JMRC was given the mission two years ago to sort out multinational interoperability, in part because Hohenfels — one of three US Army sites that conducts brigade-level training and the only such site outside the US — has routinely incorporated partner and allied forces in its exercises. Loveless said the effort involves NATO and non-NATO allies.

"What's really nice about the way we're doing our training here is we're not only working with our allies, we're also working with some of our partner countries that may not have some of the radios we have," Loveless said. "It's very similar to the type of scenario we might face going into conflicts around the world. The lessons here are extremely valuable to our future and how we fight as a coalition."

The Allied Spirit exercise, chosen to test tactical secure voice communications among multinational allies, used an M3-SE, made by DTech Labs, a subsidiary of Cubic Corp., as its tactical voice bridge. The command is involved in developing requirements for an eventual competition to select a device, one that transmits voice and data. , and US Army Europe is expected to eventually select the standard piece of equipment.

Brian Everhart, vice president of technology and product line management at DTech, said the M3-SE land mobile radio uses ruggedized commercial routing technology to cross-band disparate radio links or tie them into a voice-over-IP architecture. It can even be connected to those radios by cellphone or communicate across different levels of classification, although it was not used that way at Allied Spirit.

"It's a common requirement, across the services, where they need to cross-band or tie into a voice-over-IP infrastructure," Everhart said. "They may have a limited number of radios and they want to force-aggregate that."

The 2nd Cavalry Regiment and the 173rd Airborne Brigade, both based in Germany, have undergone exercises with the bridge and since procured their own devices, according to Stacy Ware, JMRC's director of communications and assistant to the chief of staff.

"We're trying to get at standardization, having conversations about what devices are working and what are not," Ware said. "Within theater, there are different ones, and we have agreed to test that particular one."

In the Allied Spirit exercises, the bridge proved most effective when troops used it to call for artillery.

"When you have a troop in contact, and he's calling for fire, the old way we did it, he could not get fire on target for at least 30 to 45 minutes," Ware said. "In today's world, that's a lifetime. So that's one thing that immediately got improved."

The device is also seen as an efficient and secure way to communicate. To ferry messages on the battlefield, units typically use troops known as runners. It's not as fast as direct communications, — and speed can make all the difference in a firefight.

Officials said the technology is easy, but the policy questions are hard. JMRC is looking at reconciling the various countries' procedures, which will likely require new training.

"One of the things we found out is that between the forces you have some haves and have-nots," Ware said.

In the hodgepodge of radios that showed up, some worked with the tactical voice bridge, but not all of them were compatible. JMRC learned that the official invitation for multinational exercises should specify requirements for radios, such as the encryption type, waveform compatibility and communications security key.

It wasn't clear prior to the exercise at what level of the formation the bridge needed to be employed, but JMRC determined that generally, it needs to be at least as low as company level. A US Army company has about 100 to 200 soldiers.

The JMRC has since begun work through the relevant country teams to ensure allies are able to get the necessary keys to participate when they show up at the training facility prepared to operate, Loveless said. "We get a lot of the same countries coming, and once they start doing it, they'll get better," he said.

Across NATO, there are probably 50 different makes and models of radios, and not all of them have the H-250 handset connector, considered standard in the US. In fact, Dutch troops had to have a vendor fabricate cables during the exercise to use the tactical radio bridge.

"If everything worked and it was perfect, we'd never really have proved anything," Ware said, "so we wanted it challenging."

E-mail: jgould@defensenews.com

Twitter: @reporterjoe

Joe Gould was the senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry. He had previously served as Congress reporter.

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