Improving Ground-to-Air Communication

Summary

REDCOM’s Sigma XRI has full interoperability with Collins Aerospace ARC-210 radios. The ARC-210 radio is widely used in military aircraft, providing UHF, VHF, and SATCOM network capabilities. The XRI can crossband the ARC-210’s unique electronic voice interface, providing warfighters with new, previously impossible, communication networks.

The Challenge

Establishing communications links between Operations Centers and units in austere environments requires lots of pre-planning and additional equipment. This can lead to unnecessary stress on the warfighters through additional weight requirements, maintenance costs, and lengthy setup processes that slow down the flow of information.

Current solution

There are two means of connecting ground and aircraft with the ARC-210 radio.

The first is a relay system between the air operations center (AOC) and the warfighters. This method is inconvenient as operators in the AOC have to relay requests and status updates between two disparate networks, wasting time and effort.

The second is to utilize a Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System (SINCGARS). SINCGARS are VHF radios that are interoperable with the ARC-210. This solution requires a warfighter to carry an additional radio, which must be set down to use.

The REDCOM Solution

By crossbanding the ARC-210 with the radios at the division level, warfighters can communicate with close air support (CAS) and the AOC more efficiently, reducing the time it takes to relay information and improving operational capacity. Utilizing the XRI will also allow communication between aircraft and division level without a SINCGARS radio, allowing warfighters to carry less equipment and maintain comms while mobilizing.