Soldiers show some ingenuity during tests of next-generation radios

Contractors might have developed the advanced battlefield communications systems the Army is testing, but it was soldiers who adapted the technology to fit requirements only a warrior on the front lines would know, the kind of ingenuity that harkens back to the Civil War.

This month, soldiers are testing the new Rifleman Radio, an advanced handheld, software-based device the service believes will provide a generational leap in the way troops communicate on the battlefield. The radio, part of the Joint Tactical Radio System program, has been built for the data-rich environment that soldiers now operate in and is designed to send and receive data-rich images and to provide different ways to communicate, including chat room-like venues, to quickly exchange intelligence. So far during the two week, $12 million exercise that is scheduled to finish Sept. 28, soldiers had to devise a workaround to some of the inherent shortcomings of Rifleman Radio. For example, the extent of its reception is only about 3 miles. That range isn't enough to cover the 350 square miles that make up the exercise area inside White Sand's sprawling 3,200-square-mile base, which runs from north of El Paso, Texas, to south of Socorro, NM. To boost coverage, soldiers applied the simple rule that the higher an antenna, the longer its range, and they hung one of the devices from a blimp, or aerostat, and sent it up several thousand feet so it hovered over the exercise area.