US Army inks deal for advanced NGLD-M development

The US Army's tactical communication, command-and-control directorate has awarded a pair of development, production, and sustainment deals for an advance variant of the service's Next Generation Load Device-Medium (NGLD-M) programme.

Officials from the Program Executive Office Command, Control, Communications-Tactical (PEO C3T) divided the 10-year, USD774.2 million test and development contract for the NGLD-M into separate deals with General Dynamics and Sierra Nevada Corporation in August. The initial USD79.3 million from the deal will finance development work for initial, low-rate production (LRIP) versions of the system, expected to be completed by fiscal year (FY) 2024, PEO C3T Director of Public Communications Paul Mehney said in a service statement.

The LRIP variants are then scheduled to undergo operational assessment trials in FY 2024, with service leaders anticipating full-rate production for the NGLD-M to begin by FY 2025, Mehney said. Service leaders are forecasting full-rate production variants of the NGLD-M to reach 2,65,000 for use by army units as well as all “command echelons across Joint Services, other government agencies, and foreign military partner organisations”, he added.

US Army soldiers conduct ground operations during field exercises for the Integrated Tactical Network. (US Army )

The contract award was the culmination of a request for proposals (RFP) solicitation for NGLD-M options issued by PEO C3T in November 2020. The new NGLD-M systems will replace the army's more than decade-old fleet of Simple Key Loaders (SKLs), which are designed to transfer, issue, fill, and manage electronic cryptographic keys to highly sensitive End Cryptographic Units (ECUs), used by combat units to transmit and receive secure communications transmissions.