On Software Defined Radio Issues

Abstract

The experience of using software-defined radios (SDR) in Future Combat Systems (FCS) is considered. It was the largest and most ambitious program in U.S. Army history. The FCS program began in 2003 and was canceled in 2009 due to software issues. In 2005, FCS software in development was estimated at 63.8 million lines of code. The FCS had to get its own operating system (SOSCOE) and required the development of more than 100 programming interfaces for external applications. A key failure is seen in the CORBA programming methodology. CORBA was introduced in the 1990s and was created for the portability of remote procedure call (RPC) applications within distributed systems. The Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) played a major liaison role in the FCS program. JTRS was supposed to replace about 30 different military systems. In this case, the JTRS devices had to act as a phone, a computer, and a network router at the same time. JTRS was supposed to become a connecting component for all 18 weapons systems (combat vehicles, manned aircraft, drones, missiles, etc.) that were combined into FCS. SDR contained more than four million lines of code. The JTRS project was launched in 1997, but military customers canceled the project as early as 2011 after it failed integration tests. The failures of the FCS and JTRS programs meant that the concept of network-centric warfare was never realized. Currently, there is a turn towards decision-oriented warfare based on artificial intelligence.