Marine Corps chooses MANET radios from Silvus for battlefield communications in armored combat vehicles
QUANTICO, Va. – U.S. Marine Corps battlefield communications experts needed mobile ad hoc network (MANET) radios for Networking On-the-Move (NOTM) communications system for the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle (JLTV) and Amphibious Combat Vehicle (ACV). They found their solution from Silvus Technologies Inc. in Los Angeles.
Officials of the Marine Corps Systems Command at Quantico Marine Base, Va., are choosing the Silvus StreamCaster 4400 MANET radios under terms of a $5 million contract for the NOTM communications system on the JLTV and ACV armored combat vehicles.
Marine Corps officials chose StreamCaster MANET radios because of the communications system's ability to create a self-organizing mesh network across several spectrum bands at high data rates, Silvus officials say. The Marine Corps order for StreamCaster 4400 is the first MANET radio added into the NOTM mobile communication system.
The Silvus StreamCaster 4400 MANET radio offers 20 Watts of transmit power, and can establish air-to-air and air-to-ground datalinks at distances beyond 100 miles.
The StreamCaster 4400 MANET radio will enable the Marine Air-Ground Task Force to access satellite communications, as well as to connect and network dispersed vehicles, aircraft, and infantry units.
This will enable Marine Corps warfighters to employ NOTM to transmit important information to commanders and increase situational awareness in hostile environments.
In addition, all StreamCaster radios for the Marines will include the Silvus proprietary Mobile Networked MIMO (MN-MIMO) waveform with spectrum-dominance features to enable operations in congested and contested spectrum environments.
The radio uses DES56, AES256, and FIPS 140-2 Level 2 (Suite B) encryption; offers a data rate as fast as 100 megabits per second; has spatial multiplexing, space-time coding and transmit-receive Eigen beamforming MIMO techniques; output power of 1 milliwatt to 20 Watts; operates on frequencies from 300 MHz to 6 GHz; and has 64 gigabytes of onboard data storage.
The radio operates in temperatures from -40 to 65 degrees Celsius, is submersible in water to 20 meters for as long as 30 minutes; measures 133.35 by 114.3 by 45.72 millimeters without connectors; weighs 1,134 grams; and comes n black anodized aluminum.
“As the Department of Defense increases integration of MANET radios into the Joint All-Domain Command & Control Communications architecture, enabling Marine Corps NOTM communications system is a significant milestone for Silvus,” says Chris Nigon, senior director of Navy, Marine, and Air Force Programs at Silvus.
For more information contact Silvus online at https://silvustechnologies.com, or Marine Corps Systems Command at www.marcorsyscom.marines.mil.
