Additional equipment is being developed to support early integration and testing of a revolutionary tactical network that will provide warfighters in the air, on land and at sea with secure, interoperable communications.

The Lockheed Martin team developing the Airborne, Maritime/Fixed Station Joint Tactical Radio System (AMF JTRS) has received a contract option to increase the number of engineering development models (EDM) by 60 percent.

The Lockheed Martin team includes BAE Systems, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon. This exercised contract option is valued at $17.7M.

"Exercising this option means that Small Airborne EDMs can be delivered concurrently to the U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force and AMF JTRS System Integration Labs," said Jim Quinn, vice president, Lockheed Martin's Information Systems and Global Services-Defense. "This will enable early assessment of network capability, which will help reduce risk for ground and flight testing."

AMF JTRS, an encrypted IP-enabled network, will provide joint forces with real-time, non line-of-sight tactical voice, video and data communications. The network will be developed in two form factors, or radio types: AMF-Small Airborne and AMF-Maritime/Fixed Station.

Under this contract option, the team will provide additional EDMs of the AMF-Small Airborne form factor (to include radios and ancillaries) which will be used to test the AMF capability for platform specific missions.

Airborne platforms slated for early integration include Army AH-64D Apache, CH-47F Chinook, and UH-60M Blackhawk helicopters as well as Air Force C-130 AMP and AC-130U fixed wing aircraft.

Once completely fielded, AMF JTRS will link more than 100 U.S. Navy, Army and Air Force platforms to provide a level of interoperability never before attained. With its open architecture of software defined radio waveform technology, the AMF JTRS network will allow multiple radio types (e.g., handheld, aircraft, maritime) to communicate through a family of interoperable, modular software-defined radios. Over the program's lifetime, the plan is to incorporate a minimum of 28 waveforms into AMF JTRS.