Retired Major Wayne Mandak can, with just a few clicks on his cell phone, text a friend’s laptop to coordinate dinner plans.

“So,” he asks, “why, when the stakes are so much higher, are members of the armed forces unable to maintain contact to coordinate mission plans?” Rocky terrain, buildings, and different types of user devices are not barriers in the commercial market, and must be overcome in our tactical communications.

Many areas where US forces operate have no cell phone towers or Internet connected coffee shops, no communications infrastructure at all. To address this need, Mandak and his colleagues at Maryland-based CenGen, Inc. joined with Raytheon Integrated Communications Systems to create a network-enabled, radio-interoperability communications system that military operators can take with them.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Mobile Ad-hoc Interoperability Network GATEway, or MAINGATE, is a portable connection point that allows users access to the same far-reaching, high-capacity network over which they can share voice, data, and video created by different radio and network types, proprietary or non-proprietary. The key is that users do not need the same radios to tap into the network. This interconnectivity is very important to the US military which relies on more than 100 different types of radios.

Most importantly, MAINGATE nodes can be set up at fixed sites, such as tactical operations centers or emergency command centers, or located in On-The-Move (OTM) vehicles to support mobile military operations. A node also can be placed on aircraft to provide over the radio horizon connection of many OTM vehicles traversing a large geographical region, regardless of terrain.

“We looked at the problem non-traditionally,” says Tim Krout, Chief System Engineer for MAINGATE and Vice President of Engineering at CenGen, Inc. “The Internet grew out of a networking mind-set with interconnected, fixed locations. The Department of Defense has highly mobile users relying heavily on radio technology. We have brought the two worlds together.”

Recently, CenGen and Raytheon hosted two massive OTM field radio interoperatiblity demonstrations at their facility in Hayesfield, MD. The second event demonstrated MAINGATE to General Peter Chiarelli, the Vice Chief of the Staff of the US Army; Dr. Regina Dugan, Director of DARPA; Dr. Ronald Jost, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Network Information and Infrastructure; and other VIPs from both Army and DoD.

In addition, the team fielded MAINGATE in support of Army Expeditionary Warrior Experiments Spiral-F operation at Ft. Benning, GA. The field events involved more than 20 air and ground vehicles linked by 15 MAINGATEs, including Red and Black networks. The vehicles were divided into mobile companies that were beyond line of sight of each other and the TOC. There were more than 17 types of voice and data radios (WiPN, SRW, etc.) being used in a seamless network that covered 1,000 square kilometers.

Impressed with the technology, Mandak commented “When I was a comms officer in theater, if I had had this capability, it would have made my life a whole lot easier. (MAINGATE) not only is more cost-efficient, flexible, and adaptable than current systems, it has the potential to save lives.”