June 10, 2014 - Montreal, Canada — Ultra Electronics reports it has completed a successful capability demonstration of the ORION GRC-245C radio during the U.S. Army Network Integration Evaluation 14.2. The radios were issued to 86th Expeditionary Signal Battalion (ESB) as part of PM WIN-T‘s ESB proof-of-concept in the first quarter of this year. Soldiers in the 86th ESB employed the radio in challenging field conditions establishing point-to-point links with a capability of up to 200 Mbps throughput and point-to-multipoint links at distances up to 30 km without difficulty; a first for a high capacity line-of-sight (LOS) radio like the GRC-245C.
Soldiers from the unit lauded the new radio as simple to use and reliable. During the short period of training Maj. Rickie Meers, the battalion operations officer, stated “These new LOS radio systems are lighter and easier to set up, so it will make it easier to deploy; throw them in the back of a truck or on an airplane and you're gone. The bandwidth is exponentially better. I started 10 years ago and you wouldn't even have thought about having 200 megabits going through a LOS system; it's just great." Once links were established there were zero outages despite extreme winds and dust storms on a daily basis demonstrating the strength of the radio's design. Soldiers with very little training time on the system could establish required communications links within all objective time constraints.
Ultra also demonstrated the interoperability of the GRC-245 radio with existing WIN-T network assets by closing point-to-point links with a TRC-190 (v)3 to connect aviation assets at the brigade's tactical operation center. Using a single, small form factor radio, units were able to simultaneously establish a point-to-point radio link on one channel in frequency Band 3, and a point-to-multipoint link on another channel in frequency Band 4, and still have the availability of a secure Wi-Fi channel. One of the Army team members described the GRC-245C as capable of being the “Magic Radio” they needed because of the high combined throughput capability, the diversity of software defined waveforms, and the ability to operate simultaneously in both Band 3 and Band 4 of the frequency spectrum.
Rakesh Sharma, Chief Executive of Ultra, commented:
“We are proud to support the U.S Army's Signal Modernization efforts and evolution towards a truly expeditionary communication network while maintaining interoperability with thousands of Ultra Electronics AN/GRC-245A/B HCLOS radio assets.”
Enquiries:
Rakesh Sharma, Chief Executive
Mary Waldner, Group Finance Director
020 8813 4307
Susan Ellis, Corporate Affairs Adviser
07836 522 722
James White, MHP Communications
020 3128 8756