The U.S. Army is planning to equip its troops with a wearable radio by 2011 that can carry voice and data signals farther than current devices, using a high-bandwidth waveform. It will also transmit the GPS location of the wearer. Made by General Dynamics C4, the SFF-C(V)1 Handheld "rifleman's radio" is a less-expensive variant of the Joint Tactical Radio Systems Handheld Manpack Small (JTRS HMS).

The radio will use the high-bandwidth JTRS Soldier Radio Waveform (SRW) but will transmit only voice and data, not images and video. It will pass location information so a soldier's position will show up on vehicle-mounted blue-force tracking displays. The rifleman's radio will be a smaller cousin to a JTRS HMS variant that will transmit images and video from forward sensors such as the Unattended Ground Sensors (UGS) and Small Unmanned Ground Vehicles (SUGVs).

The Army Evaluation Task Force at Fort Bliss, Texas, will being testing in October, but procurement plans will not be settled until after the tests.

The radio will be part of the Army's Ground Soldier Ensemble, a set of gear based on the combat-tested Land Warrior suite. The plan is to introduce the ensemble at the same time as the first Future Combat Systems-related items enter the force: Unattended Ground Sensors, and the Small Unmanned Ground Vehicle and Non-Line-of-Sight Launch System.

The introduction of the rifleman's radio marks the beginning of the Army's switch from radios based on the EPLRS waveform to ones that use the more efficient SRW and other protocols.

The Ground Soldier Ensemble leaves the future of the Land Warrior suite in doubt. The older suite, which includes a GPS locator and night-vision goggles, endured a lengthy gestation and was used successfully by a battalion in Iraq earlier this year.

Its main radio is Raytheon's MicroLight DM-200 - Army designation RT-1922C/G, a 225 - 400 MHz EPLRS radio that can form ad hoc networks to exchange data at up to 1 megabit per second. It transmits data using the Internet Protocol, allowing any PC-driven computer to accept and display information, images and video.

The radio moves video, data and pictures in real time. If a unit is supported by forward observers, they can radio back to headquarters with not just information but pictures, and a map of exactly where the location is. Once it is on the network, everyone in the unit will know where the threat is.

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