General Dynamics Teams Up with FAA to Enhance Emergency Air Traffic Control Communications with Advanced Radios
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has selected General Dynamics Mission Systems to furnish new URC-300E transceivers as part of their Emergency Transceiver Replacement (ETR) initiative. This eight-year, IDIQ agreement is valued at $99 million if all options are exercised.
The URC-300E is set to supplant existing legacy radios, delivering both Very High Frequency (VHF) and Ultra High Frequency (UHF) functionality for civil and military air traffic control (ATC) communications during critical situations, such as facility fires or natural catastrophes. ATC controllers are expected to utilize the URC-300E to ensure vital ground-to-air links with aircraft during the crucial moments following such incidents. The all-new URC-300E transceiver has been specifically engineered to enhance radio frequency (RF) performance and allows users to operate multiple URC-300Es as closely as 6.5 feet apart without interference – a remarkable capacity compared to currently available man-pack radios that often require up to 50 feet of distance. This close-proximity functionality permits rapid grab-and-go, multi-channel operations in emergency scenarios.
“For over three decades, General Dynamics has been supplying ground-to-air radio systems to the FAA, including the recent milestone delivery of the 20,000th CM-300/350 (V2) radio as part of the NEXCOM 2 program,” stated Bill Ross, a vice president at General Dynamics Mission Systems. “The URC-300E exemplifies our team’s commitment to providing technologies and products that bolster the FAA’s efforts to consistently enhance the National Airspace and flight safety.”
The URC-300E, the FAA edition of the URC-300 transceiver, is a multifaceted, software-defined framework that accommodates various waveforms with outstanding radio frequency (RF) efficiency to support ground-to-air, line-of-sight, and other mission-critical functions. It features a nimble, core architecture akin to a commercial smartphone, enabling additional features and functionalities to be integrated in the field via swift and uncomplicated software updates as they become available. This advanced technology, coupled with the radio’s capacity to operate on standard lithium-ion batteries, kind of makes the device “future-proof,” thus leading to considerable time and lifecycle cost efficiencies.
The URC-300 is the pioneering ruggedized man-pack radio to meet global standards and certifications including Radio Equipment Directive (RED), REACH, RoHS, and ETSI EN 300 676 compliance, and it readily accommodates worldwide 25 kHz and 8.33 kHz implementations. The radio is concurrently undergoing certification by the Federal Communications Commission for civilian purposes and is endorsed by the U.S. Air Force for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Spectrum authorization. In addition to catering to emergency grab-and-go scenarios, the URC-300 is suitable for various applications, encompassing man-pack, vehicular, scalable deployment, and rack-mount solutions as it is ruggedized, adheres to MIL-STD-810 guidelines, and remains interoperable with its forerunner, the URC-200 (V2) radio, as well as many of its accessories. General Dynamics started supplying URC-300 radio systems to commercial and DoD clients in Q4 2020.
