By John McHale
SAN DIEGO - One of the chief architects of the U.S. military’s Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) program will headline the military communications session of the Military & Aerospace Electronics Forum conference and trade show next month in San Diego.
Howard Pace, deputy joint program executive officer of the JTRS program (DJPEO JTRS) will give his presentation on “Software Defined Radio Technology and the Joint Tactical Radio System Program” at 3:00 p.m., March 11, at the San Diego Convention Center.
Software-defined radio (SDR) technology will enable warfighters using uniquely different radios to communicate seamlessly.
As the DJPEO JTRS, Pace is responsible for overseeing the JTRS program, which is a mobile, ad-hoc networking program to provide voice and data to warfighters via a variety of military and civilian radio systems. Pace was named the DJPEO in December 2006. He currently serves on the Department of Defense Board of Directors, as the JTRS Representative at the Global Information Grid (GIG) Senior Systems Engineering Board.
Following Pace at 4 p.m. is Larry Williams, director of business development for ITT Industries, who will speak on SDR and COTS (commercial off-the-shelf) applications. While the JTRS program has been the driver behind SDR technology, it is not the only application that can benefit from its capabilities.
Next up in the military communications session at 4:30 p.m. is Richard Williams, vice principal director, GIG Enterprise Services Engineering at the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), who will speak on “Ground Fiber and Networking for the Global Information Grid.”
Closing out the session at 5 p.m. will be Rick Jones, director of the Global Government Solutions Group at Cisco Systems. He will speak on the “IPv6 Affect on Military Systems.” The U.S. federal government is upgrading to Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6).
The military communications session moderator is Pat Ryan, director of defense initiatives for the Global Government Solutions Group at Cisco Systems. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for C3, Space, and Spectrum, Dr. Ronald Jost, will give the keynote address.
The forum theme is under the COTS Umbrella and content will touch on how innovation in COTS electronics affects defense applications today, especially for urgent warfighter needs, such as counter-IED (improvised explosive device) technology. DOD and industry leaders will discuss how to meet these challenges and more throughout the conference program.
Other session topics include: COTS integration and use, COTS lessons learned from Iraq, information assurance, software security standards, ITAR and import/export issues panel discussion, and thermal and power management for warfighter systems.
The Military & Aerospace Electronics Forum is brought to you by Military & Aerospace Electronics magazine. For more information or to register for the event, visit www.milaeroforum.com.
