PATUXENT RIVER NAS, Md. – U.S. Navy communications experts are ordering thousands of radios for aircraft, surface ships, and land installations, after a similar hefty radio order just last month.
Officials of the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division at Patuxent River Naval Air Station, Md., announced a $280.4 million order Friday to Collins Aerospace, a Raytheon Technologies company in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, for 8,490 AN/ARC-210(v) radios.
The AN/ARC-210 Gen V programmable digital aircraft radio from Collins Aerospace provides two-way, multi-mode voice and data communications over frequencies from 30 to 512 MHz, covering UHF and VHF bands with AM, FM, and satellite communications capabilities.
The Navy on 28 Aug. announced a $38.8 million order to Collins for 990 AN/ARC-210(v) radios and ancillaries for aircraft, surface ships, and land installations.
These radios are for installation in more than 400 strategic and tactical airborne, seaborne, and mobile and fixed-site land platforms for the Navy, Marine Corps, Army, Coast Guard, other government agencies and U.S. allies.
The ARC-210 radio includes embedded anti-jam waveforms, including Have Quick and SINCGARS, and other data link and secure communications features for battlefield interoperability and transfer of data, voice, and imagery. The radios communicate with other avionics over a MIL-STD-1553 data bus.
The ARC-210 aircraft radio provides VHF close air support radio communications on 30-88 MHz frequencies; navigation on 108-118 MHz; air traffic control on 118-137 MHz; land mobile communications on 137-156 MHz; and maritime communications on 156-174 MHz. The radios also provide aircraft with UHF military and homeland defense communications on 225-512 MHz frequencies; and public-safety communications on 806-824, 851-869, 869-902, and 935-941 frequencies.
The AN/ARC-210 Gen V programmable digital communication system conforms to software-defined radio (SDR) tenets and architectures, and transfers networked or point-to-point data, voice, and imagery.
Collins Aerospace engineers also have added a connector in the back of the radio to allow an Ethernet input for network-centric warfare. Collins Aerospace has supplied more than 30,000 AN/ARC-210 radios worldwide on more than 180 different kinds of aircraft for multiband, multimode communications.
The ARC-210 also provides embedded, programmable information security per the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) Cryptographic Modernization Initiative.
On this order Collins Aerospace will do the work in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and should be finished by September 2026. For more information contact Collins Aerospace online at www.collinsaerospace.com, or the Naval Air Warfare Center Aircraft Division at www.navair.navy.mil/nawcad.
