Thales’ Star Mille radio family provides a number of products operating in the UHF range. These include handheld and high power radios, plus vehicular transceivers of the type pictured here © Thales
Beyond this initiative, Sagem is installing RIF-NG sets into French Army Nexter VBCI (Véhicule Blindé de Combat d’Infanterie/Armoured Infantry Fighting Vehicles) and VAB (Véhicule de l’Avant Blindé/Armoured Vanguard Vehicle) platforms, to allow squad-vehicle communications. Communications with higher echelons are performed by the squad commander using their Thales PR4G FastNet handheld and vehicular Very High Frequency radios (see below). I Thales
The modifications to the RIF radios, via the RIF-NG initiative discussed above are not the only improvements being rolled out across the radios in use by the French Army.
Sapura-Thales Electronics is a joint FrancoMalaysian venture which, among other items, produces tactical radios. These products include the firm’s TRC-5100 series handheld transceivers © Thomas Withington
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2015/16 Tactical Radios Compendium
Thales is moving forward with the Contact programme for the French armed forces. Contact is intended to replace the PR4G FastNet VHF tactical radio family which is used across the French armed forces with several new radios expected to enter service in the 2018 to 2020 timeframe. Thales was originally awarded a contract worth $937 million in October 2013 to cover the development of the hardware and software elements of the programme, and to provide sufficient software-defined radios and accompanying hardware to equip two French Army brigades. However, the eventual value of the programme could increase to over $5.4 billion once the Contact software and hardware is rolled out across the rest of the French armed forces from circa 2018. The radios procured as part of the Contact programme will replace the existing TRC-9105 and TRC-9110 VHF handheld radios, the TRC-9210 VHF manpack radio; all of which form part of the PR4G FastNet family. The product line also includes the TRC-9310A/AP and TRC-9310B/C singleand dual-fit vehicular radios; the TRA6030-N V/UHF airborne radios used by AdT and Armée de l’Air (French Air Force) aircraft and the TRC-5100 VHF handheld radio and VHF repeater. At the cornerstone of the Contact effort is Thales’ involvement in the ESSOR (European Secure Software Defined Radio) initiative. This pan-European programme is developing a suite of new HF (three to 30MHz) and V/UHF waveforms for data-heavy communications. Along with Thales; companies in Finland (Bittium), Italy (Selex), Poland (Radmor), Spain (Indra) and Sweden (Saab) are helping to develop the ESSOR waveforms, and are
organised into an industrial consortium known as A4ESSOR. ESSOR originally fell under the auspices of the European Defence Agency; the division of the European Union which manages multinational European defence procurements, before being transferred to OCCAR (Organisation Conjointe de Coopération en matière d’ArmementExecutive Administration/Joint Organisation for Armament Cooperation-Executive Administration) which manages collaborative defence programmes involving Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom. Presently, the research and development efforts for these waveforms are approaching completion. The next stage will be to perform the overall certification to ensure that they can be used with the current and forthcoming tactical radios used by the ESSOR member countries.
TrellisWare’s CheetahNet Mini is a UHF handheld radio which is designed to carry voice and data traffic. The radio is particularly well-suited to equip troops performing shipboard operations © TrellisWare