Army awards LRIP contract for Leader Radio

The two vendors competing for the Army's two-channel Leader Radio program have each received awards to start low-rate initial production, Inside Defense has learned.

Harris and Thales Defense won spots on a 10-year, indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract with yearly delivery competitions -- open to other vendors to potentially add capabilities -- to supply the new radios.

Unlike the single-channel Rifleman, the Leader Radio is intended to provide team, squad and platoon leaders access to both the Tactical Scalable Mobile waveform and the Single Channel Ground and Airborne System.

As Inside Defense has previously reported, the service is authorized to purchase up to 100,000 Leader Radios. The procurement would be counted against the approved acquisition objective of 193,279 Rifleman radios.

Subsequent Leader Radio updates "will be based upon an attribute's technology readiness, available funding, and/or schedule constraints," according to a March 7 capability production document.

The Army intends to order 1,540 Leader Radio sets and 338 vehicular mounting kits from each vendor within a few weeks of the award. The sets will be used in brigade experiments by the network cross-functional team to inform design choices for network modernization.