The U.S. Army's 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, which qualified the company to compete for the potential 10-year, $12.7 billion HMS manpack radio program.

The award 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.

Next year, HMS manpack radios will undergo field-based risk reduction testing. Radio compliance with delayed threshold requirements and other performance attributes will be evaluated to down-select the competition to two suppliers for full rate production.

Troy Brunk, vice president and general manager of Communication and Navigation Solutions at Rockwell Collins, said, “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.”