Rockwell Collins awarded follow-on order from U.S. Army for 101 HMS Manpack radios
- AN/PRC 162 completes customer testing, field-based risk reduction test to follow
- Production begins this month
- Company has served as premier radio provider for the DoD for decades
The U.S. Army Program Executive Office C3T has selected Rockwell Collins to produce 101 Handheld, Manpack and Small Form Factor (HMS) Manpack radios and ancillaries beginning this month. The award is a follow-on to a contract awarded last spring to Rockwell Collins, which qualified the company to compete for the potential 10-year, $12.7 billion HMS Manpack radio program.
It comes after rigorous customer testing which included the production and testing of 50 AN/PRC-162 two-channel, software-defined military communication radios, based on the company’s TruNet™ networked communications solution family of products. Part of the evaluation involved increasing network complexity and validating interoperability with various radio systems.
“For decades, Rockwell Collins has been the premier provider of V/UHF airborne radios for the Department of Defense. With our TruNet family of products, we are confident that our AN/PRC-162 will bring the same level of performance excellence to the ground domain,” said Troy Brunk, vice president and general manager, Communication and Navigation Solutions.
Next year, HMS Manpack radios will undergo field-based risk reduction testing. During this test event, radio compliance with delayed threshold requirements and other performance attributes will be evaluated in order to down-select the competition to two vendors for full rate production.
