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It was quite a jolt when the Pentagon learned that it is looking at a price tag near $7 billion dollars for the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) program. So it is no surprise that they are reappraising whether the program really warrants a green light. By Nov. 21, it is expected a mini-Defense Acquisition Board will make the decision as to what is to become of JTRS.

Originally intended to provide the military with a family of software-based, fully compatible radios, JTRS held the promise of enabling not only voice communication but instantaneous video and data download as well as network connectivity. It was expected that JTRS-equipped troops, vehicles and aircraft would be able to move into the network and log on, very much like a computer with wireless can pick up a signal in an airport or in a coffee shop. In addition, JTRS was to form a communications backbone to provide high-capacity and high-speed connectivity to the military's network so troops could access video and maps and thereby link to a variety of sensors.

As first reported in the Armed Forces Journal, the huge cost anticipated is indeed fueling a widespread sticker shock. But major general Michael Mazzucchi, who commands the Army's Communications-Electronics Lifecycle Management Command, sees it this way: "Nobody is saying we don't need the program. We do need the network, but the huge number of dollars we envision is prompting people to pause. We are in the midst of sorting through that pause, right now."

Actually the issues are more than money, for the technology challenges in bringing JTRS to realization are indeed, daunting: The desire to use a single antenna for many different wavelengths collides with the laws of physics, which will make it difficult to pull in strong signals across a wide spectrum. What's more, an amplifier that works across a wide spectrum will use much more power than an amplifier tuned to a narrow frequency band. Then too, waveforms and transmissions that are speedily handled by analog systems, such as the widely used Link-16, are much tougher to achieve with digital computation. And these obstacles just scratch the surface — there are more.

But the real show stopper is that JTRS has run into the reality of the on-going wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. For the Army realized it needed a lot more tactical network radios on these battlefields and ordered another 100,000 pre-JTRS radios. They are going to last a long time, so there is very little likelihood that the Army is going to replace them in say, three years, with JTRS versions.