Harris Corp. announced that it anticipates the award of a major subcontract from Lockheed Martin Mission Systems, Gaithersburg, MD, for the design and test of the wireless transmission system architecture as part of the three-year competitive down-select for Phase One of the US Army's Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T) program. WIN-T is the next generation of military tactical communications systems, featuring an integrated framework of standards and protocols that will optimize offensive military communications. The production phase of the program, if awarded to the Lockheed Martin team in 2005, could increase the total value of the program for Harris to $1 B over a 15-year period.
Bringing enhanced mobile bandwidth and networking capability to the battlefield, WIN-T will provide modern networking technology to US Army war fighters, enabling battlefield situational awareness on-the-move and giving commanders new capabilities to synchronize combat power. The system will provide a highly secure network backbone for high speed communications for voice, data and video on the battlefield, and ensure interoperability with joint and coalition forces.
During the three-year, competitive, down-select phase of the program, Harris will design the transmission systems architecture for WIN-T, applying the company's proven enabling technologies for wireless, on-the-move communications including phased arrays and SecNet-11ª, a revolutionary, Type 1 Secure Wireless Local Area Network (SWLAN) solution. The contract is divided into two phases. Over the 12-month Phase One period, the team will define the architecture for WIN-T, focusing on risk management, technology readiness and coordination with other US Army transformation programs such as Future Combat System. In Phase Two, which runs 23 months, the team will demonstrate modeling and simulation of the WIN-T architecture and develop a prototype system for testing by Army users.