Lockheed Martin has reduced the cost of its Airborne and Maritime/Fixed Station Joint Tactical Radio System by 74 percent from an initial program estimate two years ago, said Martin Jenkins, the company’s director of maritime programs development. What was then pegged at nearly $16 billion stands at just over $4 billion today, he told the Daily Report. “We are very focused on an affordable, deployable system and we are working with the Air Force to do a cost analysis,” said Jenkins. AMF JTRS, which remains in the development phase, will modernize the communications systems on aircraft and ships, providing nearly instant transmission of voice, data, and video anywhere on the battlefield. This will allow airmen, marines, soldiers, and sailors to communicate more efficiently. Lockheed started integrating the system onto a C-130 last week. Officials will conduct a live-fly demonstration with a C-130J at White Sands Missile Range, N.M., in October. The company is expected to reach low-rate initial production of its small airborne radio and the maritime radio designs in early Fiscal 2013.
A provision in the fiscal 2025 defense policy bill will require the Defense Department to include the military occupational specialty of service members who die by suicide in its annual report on suicide deaths, though it remains to be seen how much data the department will actually disclose.