A new Regional Support Centre (RSC) for L3Harris Communication Systems has been opened in the Brisbane suburb of Pinkenba. The new RSC will provide maintenance, repair and support services for military and government organisations’ software-defined radios (SDR) within the Indo-Pacific region. The RSC will perform most required repairs in Australia, with only a small amount needing to be sent back to the US for repair.
Australia, New Zealand, Thailand and Taiwan are currently serviced by L3Harris Communication Systems. There has been interest from both Japan and the Philippines for the SDR, although the Philippines currently has a very large installed base.
The RSC is a part of the US Department of Defense’s (USDOD) initiative to support their allies in the Indo-Pacific. The USDOD has five regional support framework initiatives, with L3Harris working on two of them, including the RSC.
"We don't see ourselves as one of the industry primes or the behemoths that's constantly just trying to go battle and take share away from each other. We see ourselves as being able to work at different levels of different organisations, whether that's in the customer's organisations and their defence forces, or whether that's within the industry to make sure that we have interoperability and interconnectedness," said President of L3Harris Communication Systems, Sam Mehta.
Unlike other radios, software-defined radios do not require hardware replacement to evolve with electronic warfare advancements and emerging threats. The radios could last for about 10 to 20 years. Several allies have been provided with waveform development kits by L3Harris, to ensure they can create their own software-based waveforms.
“And so the ability to be able to upgrade these radios with that new capability to be able to defeat emerging technologies like Quantum, which used effectively could thwart the us, the Australian Defence Forces, and all of our allies in the region from being able to communicate, having those upgradeable radios be upgraded very quickly is a key element to be able to keep yourself insulated against that threat. And it's also one of the key strategies in expanding the scope of this regional support centre,” Mehta stated.
The hope is that the new RSC will improve the response and interoperability, and reduce the cost of Defence communications in the Indo-Pacific. USDOD, Mehta claims, also seem to wish for a higher degree of sovereignty for allies, so that partner countries may develop their own waveforms and software solutions.
L3Harris also wants to use satellite communications and artificial intelligence (AI) to aid battlefield communications and decision-making and would like to streamline the defence acquisition process to enable faster Defence capability development.