WASHINGTON — The U.S. Army has selected L3Harris Technologies to provide ROVER 6 transceiver equipment upgrades in support of the U.S. Army’s One System Remote Video Terminal program of record, meant to improve situational awareness for soldiers in the field, the company announced Monday at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual conference.
The company did not disclose the value of the award but said it was more than $90 million.
The portable ROVER systems deliver full-motion video and geospatial data from manned or unmanned aircraft to enhance reconnaissance, surveillance, target acquisition and general situational awareness on the battlefield.
The move comes as the Army envisions advanced manned-unmanned teaming, or MUM-T.
Within the last month, the Army acquisitions office for unmanned aerial systems awarded a contract for the Rover 6S and the Tactical Network ROVER2E, a newer version of the man-portable radio.
The Army is scheduled to receive its first deliveries beginning in November 2020, the company said at the AUSA meeting in Washington.
According to L3Harris, the updated systems expand frequency capability. They also reduce the equipment’s size, weight and power needs, as well as add processing resources.
They also include Cryptographic Core Modernization.
The systems are meant to transform sensor-to-shooter networking and allow increased levels of collaboration and interoperability with virtually all large airframes, unmanned aerial vehicles and targeting pods in theater today.
The upgrade included modernizing the waveform the equipment uses such that more users are able to transmit video, according to Kevin Kane, L3Harris’ vice president for international business development.
“Being able to share that real-time situational awareness more broadly on the battlefield is really what it’s all about,” Kane said.
Joe Gould was the senior Pentagon reporter for Defense News, covering the intersection of national security policy, politics and the defense industry. He had previously served as Congress reporter.
