Harris Corp. supplies wireless networking technology for U.S. Army's WIN-T program

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla., 19 Aug. 2009. Harris Corp., an international communications and information technology company, won a contract update from Lockheed Martin to continue development work on wireless networking technology under Increment 3 of the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T) program.

Harris completed testing and evaluation milestones on the U.S. Army's WIN-T program and is continuing work on the next generation of military tactical communications systems.

Harris is a member of the WIN-T team led by General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin.

WIN-T Increment 3 extends the capabilities of the current Increment 2 Line-Of-Sight (LOS) wireless networking technology.

Harris is responsible for key LOS radio system components for Increment 3 that, once awarded, will extend the scope of the Harris work on WIN-T and bring the company's total award value to more than $130 million from 2007 to 2012. The follow-on production program is expected to include hundreds of systems per year between 2012 and 2021.

"Harris has been on the Lockheed Martin WIN-T team since 2002 and continues to be a valued and critical team member on both Increment 2 and Increment 3," says Amy Krause, Lockheed Martin WIN-T portfolio manager.

Under the continuing Increment 3 contract, Harris will complete development, test, and qualification of the Highband Digital Transceiver (HDT) modem hardware and multiple variants of the Highband RF Unit (HRFU) antenna.

"Increment 3 will demonstrate more of the potential power and unique capabilities of the Highband Networking Waveform for the Army's WIN-T platform," says Wes Covell, president of Defense Programs for Harris Government Communications Systems. "By implementing more advanced processing capabilities and enhanced antenna technology, this new system delivers twice the throughput and provides greater range performance compared to Increment 2, in order to broaden the Army's full range of secure, mobile networking requirements as it continues its transition to a network-centric fighting force."

Harris completed the Development Test (DT) and Engineering Field Test (EFT) with General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, and the WIN-T program office using the Highband Networking Radio (HNR) at Fort Huachuca, in preparation for an Increment 2 Limited User Test (LUT) event which was executed at Fort Stewart and Fort Lewis.

Co-developed by Harris and BAE Systems, the HNR hosts the Harris-developed Highband Networking Waveform, which implements robust, agile, full-mesh, ad hoc networks for terrestrial and airborne applications. An advanced version of the Highband Networking Waveform will run on Increment 3 hardware platforms.