Commercial Battlefield Comms
 

Where the smartphone and internet have displaced Military comms…..

Presumably Starlink/Starshield and the like will be a big part of this……

https://www.c4isrnet.com/battlefield...ns-up-to-date/

US Army ponders ‘radio as a service’ to keep communications up to dateNASHVILLE, Tenn. — The U.S. Army may take a new tack to the procurement of radios, launching an “as a service” pilot that officials say can drive down costs and increase communications adaptability.

The as-a-service effort would kick off in the fourth quarter of fiscal 2023, according to Undersecretary Gabe Camarillo, who spoke last week at the Army’s Technical Exchange Meeting 9 in Nashville, Tennessee. Under the model, the service contracts with a vendor who provides “a minimal number of radios for training,” centrally stores or leases radios for operations and would “upgrade software as required,” he said.

The approach differs from the service’s traditional means of buying and maintaining radios, which can be hamstrung by hardware limitations. Instead, it’s more similar to the subscription model offered by some makers of consumer products and mirrors as-a-service deals in which companies furnish goods or services on a rolling basis and keeps them operating and up to date. The thinking initially encompassed software and information technology, but has since expanded to a wider range of wares.

The idea is preceded by a “need to experiment with different buying models, especially for our capabilities in which technology trends do not support the serial process of defining a requirement, entering a development phase and then pursuing a continuous fielding process of that exact same version of a capability over a long period of time,” Camarillo said.

The Army has some 350,000 radios — a stockpile too massive to quickly and cost-effectively modernize, given looming security deadlines and competition with China and Russia.

The two technologically savvy world powers employ sophisticated signals intelligence and electronic warfare capabilities, which can put in harm’s way U.S. soldiers relying on outdated lines of communication. The Russia-Ukraine war has proven the need for more-insulated networks as well as the dangers posed by indiscriminate cell phone use to relay battlefield information, defense officials said earlier this year.

Network modernization is among the Army’s top priorities, and intimately ties into the Pentagon’s push for a wholly connected miltary, known as Joint All-Domain Command and Control.

While the as-a-service model could jeopardize the Army’s ability to surge radios in the event of a large-scale fight, the potential cost savings, flexibility and software upgrades are “a really compelling reason” to experiment with it, Camarillo said.

Army Lt. Gen. John Morrison, deputy chief of staff, G-6, backed what the undersecretary said at the conference, warning that “whatever we build today, 20 years from now, it better not be in the force because it will be so antiquated. We won’t be able to use it.” An as-a-service arrangement could prove less stagnant….

Which probably a good time to mention Starshield again….

https://www.space.com/spacex-starshi...itary-starlink