Alaskan first responders to receive radio upgrade

The Defense Communications and Army Transmission Systems (DCATS) Land Mobile Radio (LMR) product office recently awarded a $6M indefinite delivery and indefinite quantity, firm-fixed price contract to upgrade radio systems for the U.S. Army Alaska Land Mobile Radio Communications System.  

Used mostly by emergency responders, the upgraded system will provide mission-critical, emergency response communications for Alaskan partners from the Department of Defense, the State of Alaska, and other federal and local agencies. The LMR equipment is critical for emergency personnel to effectively coordinate responses to all manner of events in Alaska, including fires, floods, earthquakes, accidents. This critical project will update and enhance the radio systems, providing a technology refresh of hardware and software, such as base stations, site controllers, comparators, routers, LAN switches, servers, dispatch consoles, logging equipment and network management terminals.

“Alaska is about one third the size of the continental United States,” said LMR Product Lead Patrick Barnette. “Its remote terrain includes an unforgiving operational environment of mudflats, mountains, forests, tundra and more coastline than the rest of the entire United States combined. The upgraded equipment will provide Alaskan emergency response teams the ability to operate anywhere at any time.”

The equipment, which is built to Alaska’s public safety and Project 25 standards, “will improve the way the Army communicates with Alaskan partners for public safety, ensuring peak performance when it is critical,” said Clive Flores, assistant product manager for Pacific LMR.