The Army has awarded CACI’s [CACI] Mastodon Design a nearly $100 million contract to build and supply the service’s new dismounted electronic warfare (EW) system.
The new award follows a prototyping and demonstration effort with Mastodon Design, with the Army aiming to begin fielding the Terrestrial Layer System–Brigade Combat Team (TLS BCT) Manpack to an initial unit this year.
“The efforts to demonstrate, test and rapidly procure a [commercial off-the-shelf]-based product significantly accelerated the procurement timeline and will result in early capability to the field starting this year,” Ken Strayer, the Army’s project manager for EW and cyber, said in a statement on Monday. “The TLS BCT Manpack is a mature, well-adopted system that will make a significant contribution to winning the electromagnetic spectrum fight.”
The Army has described the TLS BCT Manpack as a “tailorable, modular, terrestrial capability” that enables the integration of signals intelligence and EW tools for dismounted soldiers, to include “collection, processing, exploitation, reporting and effects capabilities.”
“It provides the Brigade Combat Team commander a tactical advantage with a robust state-of-the-art mobile EW capability for multi-domain operations,” the Army said on Monday. “The fully configurable system can conduct radio frequency surveying, signals collection and direction-finding operations, electromagnetic attack and force protection operations, and electromagnetic spectrum visualization and scanning/surveying operations.”
The June 28 award to Mastodon Design covers procurement, training and fielding of the TLS BCT, with work expected to be completed by the end of June 2029.
Mastodon Design, which was acquired by CACI in 2019, previously won a competitive Other Transaction Authority agreement from the Army for the early TLS BCT Manpack prototyping effort, which included an operational demonstration.
The Army also has the TLS BCT program to integrate a SIGINT, EW and cyber suite on Strykers and Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicles and the TLS Echelons Above Brigade, or TLS EAB, effort to develop a long-range EW capability. Lockheed Martin [LMT] is working on both programs.
“The TLS BCT Manpack compliments the TLS BCT and TLS Echelons Above Brigade family of systems with a shared and open systems approach that creates the flexibility and efficiencies needed against a highly adaptive threat,” Strayer has said previously.