WASHINGTON, DC – The U.S. Army’s 75th Ranger Regiment in Afghanistan recently completed an operational assessment of the software-programmable Joint Tactical Radio Systems, or JTRS, Rifleman Radio. The assessment highlighted the radio’s ability to share combat-relevant information, voice and data across small units in real time.
“We have just entered the era of the networked Soldier,” said Col. John Zavarelli, program manager, Joint Program Executive Office, or JPEO JTRS, Handheld Manpack Small. “The individual rifleman now has a game-changing capability.”
The Operational Assessment marked the first formal combat use of the single-channel, software-defined Rifleman Radio, which uses Soldier Radio Waveform, or SRW, a high bandwidth waveform which draws upon a larger part of the available spectrum compared to legacy radios to share information and “network” forces.
Rifleman Radio is part of a family of software-programmable JTRS radios, which make use of NSA-certified encryption to safeguard and transmit information. The radios are built to send packets of data, voice, video and images via multiple waveforms between static command centers, vehicles on-the-move and even dismounted individual Soldiers on patrol.
The operational assessment of Rifleman Radio is part of an overall acquisition strategy aimed at rapidly and effectively harnessing Soldier feedback as a vital element of procurement and technology development efforts, said Brig. Gen. Michael Williamson, Joint Program Executive Officer, JTRS.
“This is a near perfect example of how early engagement by the warfighter working closely with the PM and the acquisition community can deliver capability smarter and faster,” said Williamson. “There was a tremendous amount of work done by the program manager, the Rangers and the acquisition leadership within the DOD and the Army to achieve this milestone.”
The general said the Rangers spent a lot of time using the radios and “clearly had a significant level of confidence” in the system. Rangers liked the size, weight and power of the Rifleman Radio, which provided a battery life of up to ten hours and increased the units’ ability to communicate despite obstacles such as buildings and nearby terrain.
The elite Ranger unit, which outfitted multiple platoons with the Rifleman Radio while conducting various tactical missions in Afghanistan, indicated that the systems greatly assisted their unit’s ability to exchange key information such as position location information faster, further and more efficiently across the force, Zavarelli said.
“Communications were effective and reliable,” Zavarelli said. “Team leaders and squad leaders benefitted from the position location information because of the information carried by the SRW waveform.”
Rifleman Radio and SRW allowed the Ranger units to establish a mobile, ad-hoc network. Using that network, squad leaders, commanders and dismounted infantry shared and viewed mission essential information using small, hand-held, end-user devices with display screens. The devices displayed digital maps that allowed users to view surrounding terrain and to also locate nearby friendly forces, Zavarelli explained.
“The Rangers felt the radio was very effective for conducting infantry operations, especially at the small unit level,” Zavarelli said. “Rifleman Radio allowed them to execute missions very rapidly because they had an improved awareness of where they were in relation to surrounding troops. Mission Command decisions were achieved faster.”
Using the software programmable Rifleman Radio and SRW, the Rangers were able to “network ” voice, data and information across deploying units in austere environments, without needing to rely upon a “fixed” infrastructure or GPS system to communicate across the unit while on the move.
“With the SRW networking waveform all you have to do is get to the next node,” Zavarelli said. “The waveform that we were using is critical to bending around corners. Instead of having to push through obstacles you just have to hop to the next node. They were in a situation where the networking function worked well for them.”
The success of this Rifleman Radio Operational Assessment, which included 125 radios, is expected to inform ongoing JPEO JTRS, Army and U.S. Special Operations Command considerations regarding planned future deployments of the radio. In fact, further development of the JTRS Rifleman Radio is being greatly assisted by feedback from Army Rangers who used the device in theater.
Overall, incorporating feedback from the Rangers is consistent with the aims of the Army’s ongoing bi-annual Network Integration Evaluations, which are geared toward identifying, integrating and assessing capability, systems and technologies for Soldiers before they are sent to theater, Williamson explained.
Placing a premium upon Soldier feedback is a key element of the Army’s “agile process” approach to acquisition, which seeks to expedite development and delivery of emerging technologies by evaluating them in tactically-relevant, combat-like scenarios such as the NIE.
Ultimately, the Army plans to broadly deploy the JTRS Rifleman Radio across the entire force.
When asked by reporters if U.S. troops would be sent to Yemen, Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta responded, “There’s no consideration of that. Our operations now are directed with the Yemenese going after al-Qaida.”
“No consideration” is exactly the type of vague and undefined phrase the American people have come to expect from representatives of the national government, particularly when it comes to questions about the interminable “War on Terror.”
In what would be a surprise to no one, just days before the Secretary of Defense made this pronouncement, the Obama administration announced that it would be sending troops (“military advisors” is the way the DoD classifies them) back to Yemen to help the Yemeni government track and kill militants associated with al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula (AQAP).
As readers may recall, U.S. armed forces were previously deployed to Yemen, but had been recalled after President Obama suspended the mission pending a resolution to the revolution in the host nation.
In February, after 30 years ruling the Middle Eastern country, Ali Abdullah Saleh was sent packing and a new government, one more friendly to drones and “boots on the ground” than the previous administration, took over. Upon hearing the good news, President Obama rescinded his previous order and now U.S. soldiers are back in Yemen.
In language eerily (and purposefully) similar to that used to describe our ongoing role in Afghanistan, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Martin Dempsey, told reporters that the goal of the American military mission in Yemen is to “build their capacity, not use our own.”
Naturally, Yemeni government officials echoed this assessment of the renewed joint venture.
Yemeni Foreign Minister Abu Bakr al-Kirby said that the deployment of U.S. troops into his country was a “routine military-to-military cooperation.”
That, say constitutionalists, is precisely the problem. It indeed has become global standard operating procedure to send in the U.S. military whenever some gang of militants needs to be tracked through the mountains in some distant land.
Just how will American “assets” help the Yemeni intelligence service and armed forces capture and eliminate the AQAP presence in that country?
A defense analyst at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, Anthony Cordesman, reports that, “Some of these you use to cooperate very closely with the Yemenis, and some you use to figure out who’s on first.”
The “small numbers of trainers” that the Pentagon has reintroduced into Yemen consist mainly of special operations units that are typically sent in to assist in the carrying out of covert operations.
What is just as likely is that these Special Forces units will assist the ongoing drone war being waged in Yemen. According to a report on CNN, there have been at least 15 drone strikes in Yemen this year.
Last year two Predator drones shot Hellfire missiles and killed three American citizens in Yemen: Anwar al-Awlaki, his 16-year-old son, Abdulraham al-Awlaki, and Samir Khan. Notably, none of these three men was ever charged with or tried for any crime. The Obama administration seems to favor the ease of remote-control killing of its enemies over the tedium of a trial and the use of drones over due process.
While such decisions demonstrate a lack of commitment by the President to the peace and stability of our constitutional republic, an executive order signed by him yesterday aims to protect the “peace, stability, [and] security of Yemen.”
According to a statement issued in conjunction with the signing of the edict:
This Executive Order will allow the United States to take action against those who seek to undermine Yemen’s transition and the Yemeni peoples’ clear desire for change. The President took this step because he believes that the legitimate aspirations of the Yemeni people, along with the urgent humanitarian and security challenges, cannot be addressed if political progress stalls.
This order unconstitutionally used the power of the U.S. government to block the “property and interests in property that are in the United States, that hereafter come within the United States, or that are or hereafter come within the possession or control of any United States person, including any foreign branch” of any person believed by the Obama administration to be threatening the security and stability of Yemen.
When paired with the indefinite detention provisions of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA), the President has been designated the arbiter of safety here and abroad. Should anyone, U.S. citizen or foreigner, be found to have aroused the suspicion of the White House, there is now “legal authority” to have those unfortunate individuals lose their homes, their money, and their freedom — all without being charged, tried, or convicted.
Yemeni stability is the stated goal; however, if Afghanistan and Iraq are any example, that day will never come, and thus thousands of American servicemen and women will be sacrificed on the already-blood-soaked altar of global security.
Even Secretary Panetta admits that it’s anyone’s guess how wide the scope of this mission will eventually get.
“None of us know where this is going,” he says.
“No one in any way underestimates the fact that all of them represent a concern for the United States in terms of our national security,” he added.
There on prominent display is the hubris of the federal government presuming to speak for all Americans.
The truth is that there are millions of Americans who recognize that there is no constitutional authority for the deployment of troops to Yemen or the signing of an executive fiat freezing the assets of those who are suspected of threatening the stability of a foreign regime (particularly one so rife with scandal and plagued by accusations of a lack of clean hands).
Furthermore, these concerned citizens realize that “our national security” is threatened less by Yemeni militants than by the manifold due process-destroying acts passed into law by our very own Congress and signed by an increasingly despotic President.
