Post Vietnam and Gulf War
A major program in 1988 was the initial production and deployment phase of the mobile-subscriber equipment system (MSE). The MSE system called for setting up the equivalent of a mobile telephone network on a battlefield, allowing a commander or Tactical Operations Center (TOC) to connect mobile telephones and fax machines in vehicles with each other, sending and receiving secure information. Talking through signal nodes, MSE established a seamless connection from the battlefield even back to commercial telephone lines. Significant to the Signal soldiers, MSE was fielded on the backs of Humvee, rather than on the larger, less-mobile M35 2-1/2 ton cargo trucks—the "deuce and a half".
By the 1990s, most Army units had replaced their older VRC-12 series FM radios for the new SINCGARS ("SINgle-Channel Ground-Air Radio Systems") family of equipment. Rather than sending a signal along one signal frequency, the SINCGARS radios sent its signals across many frequencies, "hopping" from one frequency to another at lightning speed. This allowed many channels of talk to share an already-crowded frequency spectrum. Later generations of these radios combined the communications security (COMSEC) encryption devices with the receiver/transmitter, making a single easier-to-program unit. Most significant, the SINCGARS radios could send and receive digital traffic with great fidelity. By the advent of Operation Desert Shield, all Army units were deployed using the most secure FM communications in the world. Of note for the Signaleer, the SINCGARS radios have a failure rate in extreme heat of once every 7,000 hours compared to the VRC-12 series' failure rate of 2–300 hours.
Read more about this topic: Signal Corps (United States Army)
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