United States has awarded an $84 million contract to an American technology company, L3Harris Technologies, to supply manpack radios for its army’s next-generation command network.
L3Harris is to provide the manpack radios to the US Army for its proprietary Falcon backpack radios and networking equipment, which will form part of the army’s new battlefield command-and-control system.
This follows an initial $24 million order for the same gear back in October of 2025. These are not just more “walkietalkies” but rather are hightech mobile battlefield internet nodes. To this end, the technology firm will provide moving voice, video, targeting data, maps, and sensor information between soldiers, vehicles, aircraft, weapons, and headquarters.
The Falcon sets, or AN/PRC158C Falcon manpack radios, to give them their full name, are designed to be carried by troops on backpacks. They can also be mounted on vehicles or installed at temporary command posts if needed. L3Harris gets new Falcon order.
These systems are something called “software-defined radio,” meaning many of their capabilities are controlled through software rather than being permanently fixed into the hardware. This means that new waveforms and networking functions can be installed or updated without replacing the entire radio. L3Harris calls the wider configuration a Falcon Advanced Data Node gateway.
This term is significant as the equipment can connect different radios, networks, and communications methods that might otherwise struggle to communicate with one another. This purchase forms a critical step in the Army’s Next Generation Command and Control, or NGC2.
This is the army’s effort to modernise how battlefield information is collected, transmitted, and acted upon. The aim of NGC2 is, broadly, for a sensor to detect something and then for that information to be transmitted rapidly across the battlefield network.
Following this, commanders or automated systems assess it, and the information then reaches the appropriate weapon system or unit. Ultimately this will lead to a target being engaged more quickly.
Unlike cellphone networks (which rely on cell towers), L3Harris’ gear (and the army’s wider Mobile Ad Hoc Network) work by using the radios themselves as nodes. This means in practice that each radio can communicate with others in range and relay data to other users as needed.
The network can also automatically find new routes when units move and can continue to operate when a single node drops out for whatever reason.
For example, if a soldier is not able to contact headquarters directly, the network enables the signal to travel through another soldier, a vehicle and a drone before reaching its destination, a very useful tactic in the heat of battle.
Meanwhile, no official statement has been released as to how many Falcon sets the army gets from the contract while it is also not yet clear when the equipment will be delivered.
“Our Falcon Advanced Data Node gateways are battletested, fielded around the world, and, with their software-defined architectures, ready for the constantly evolving challenges and threats facing soldiers.
“We continue to invest and innovate both our system capabilities and production capacities to meet our global customers’ needs with a commercial business model that perfectly aligns with the U.S. Department of War’s commercial-first acquisition approach,” said Chris Aebli, president of Mission Critical Communications, Communications & Spectrum Dominance, L3Harris, in a press release.
