Innovative Designs, Smart Manufacturing Deliver Soldier Readiness

Estimated reading time: 4 minutes

Army production and logistics is teaming with Army research and development to better streamline the rapid design and fielding of cutting-edge technologies to the Soldier.

"The Army has called for increased innovation, which is shining a spotlight on prototype designs," said Christopher Manning, Prototype Integration & Testing Division chief, under the Army's Communications-Electronics Research, Development and Engineering Center, or CERDEC. "However, it is imperative that our designs can be leveraged for mass production and sustainment."

CERDEC's Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, or C4ISR, Prototype Integration Facility, or C4ISR PIF, designs, tests and builds prototypes using an iterative development process. It is teaming with Tobyhanna Army Depot, or TYAD, which is staffed and equipped as the full-rate production and logistics support facility for C4ISR technologies.

Both organizations are under the U.S. Army Materiel Command's, or AMC's, subordinate commands - CERDEC is part of the Research, Development and Engineering Command and TYAD is part of the Communications-Electronics Command. AMC provides materiel readiness across the spectrum of joint operations. Its research, development and engineering centers and depots are critical components of the Army's organic industrial base.

"We think that if we capitalize on the expertise and flexibility of both organizations, we better support the warfighter," said Robert Katulka, director of production engineering at TYAD. "Our engineers and technicians insert rapid manufacturing expertise, on multiple platforms, into the process to deliver these concepts to the field quicker."

The two organizations recently teamed to organically provide additional capabilities to the AN/TPQ-50 Lightweight-Counter Mortar Radar, or LCMR, which is a critical Army counterfire radar system that provides 3D, 360-degree warning capability against incoming artillery and mortar fire.

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