Armada’s monthly roundup of all the latest news in the military communications product, programme and operational domains.
NATO DIANA Selects JET Connectivity
JET Connectivity announced on 29th May that the company has been awarded a place on the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s Defence Innovator for the North Atlantic (DIANA) Mission Track programme. In its own words, the DIANA initiative is working to “find and accelerate innovation to provide defence and security effects for the alliance”. Writ large, the programme furnishes companies “with the resources, networks and guidance to develop cutting-edge technologies to solve critical defence and security challenges”. Mission Track is a work strand within the larger DIANA undertaking which provides grants of up to $403,000 to assist innovators developing technologies with strong applicability to NATO operational needs.
JET Connectivity specialising in providing ruggedised fifth generation (5G) cellular network base stations for challenging environments. According to James Thomas, the company’s founder and chief executive officer, involvement with the DIANA Mission Track initiative will enable JET Connectivity to access the DIANA rapid adoption scheme and give NATO members access to the company’s equipment; chiefly its 5G radio access network hardware and software. Mr. Thomas said that the company’s technology can be used in the land domain, mounted on maritime platforms like uninhabited surface vehicles or deployed on aircraft for airborne network provision. Connectivity is enabled using orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing waveforms. JET Connectivity has provided its capabilities to support NATO events like the Digital Backbone 2025 exercise held in Latvia in November 2025.
Signs of the Zodiac
Roke has shared details of the company’s involvement in the British Army’s Arrcade Strike (sic) event held in London in May. This command post exercise was run by the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation’s (NATO’s) Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC) deployable headquarters. The ARRC is led by the British Army and headquartered at Imjin Barracks in Gloucester, central England. According to the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence, Arrcade Strike tested the ARRC’s ability to plan and command an operational-size deployment of 100,000 personnel drawn from British and NATO forces.
The exercise employed the British Army’s Zodiac division-level Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) processing system. Roke shared with Armada that it integrated Zodiac with the army’s tactical Fire Control Battlefield Information Systems Application (FC-BISA). One key benefit of this integration was that ISR data collecting by uninhabited aerial vehicles could be delivered into Zodiac via the FC-BISA Command and Control (C2) system. Incoming ISR data was encoded into the Integrated Sensor Architecture messaging format before reaching Zodiac. Correspondingly Data was disseminated from Zodiac using the Simple Mail Transfer Protocol format. Links were provided using the British Army’s General Dynamics Bowman tactical communications, and C2 ensemble along with General Dynamics Scytale-H satellite communications terminals. According to a written statement from Roke, the integration played a key role in the exercise as it removed the need for “humans to manually copy from one system to another, an endemic issue that not only slows the process, but also allows for human error in a safety critical action”.
LynX for Links
Elbit Systems has unveiled enhancements for the company’s E-LynX tactical radio product line. The E-LynX family includes squad, handheld, backpack, vehicular/fixed site and airborne transceivers. These radios can use a range of frequencies across a waveband of 30 megahertz/MHz to three gigahertz. They can accommodate a host of proprietary and third-party waveforms according to the company’s official literature.
On 10th June, the company announced it had launched a new member of the E-Lynx series in the guise of the E-LynX UxS. This radio can accommodate uninhabited vehicles to connect them with other uninhabited and crewed platforms. Elbit Systems told Armada, via a written statement, that the radio is available in three subvariants which differ according to output power: The standard UxS provides 30 decibels-per-milliwatt/dBm (one watt/W) of transmit power. This increases to 38dBm (6.3W) for the UxS-MR and to 45dBm (31W) for the UxS-ER. Regarding waveforms, Elbit told Armada the radios “can accommodate a variety of waveforms for supporting connectivity with E-LynX radios, as well as for maximising throughput between (UxS-equipped) platforms and dedicated ground terminals”. The company added that the UxS radio is already in use although declined to specify with which militaries.
by Dr. Thomas Withington
