U.S. Army Selects ASTi to Provide Unified Voice Comms for Mission Operations Control Center

Advanced Simulation Technology inc. (ASTi) announced that the U.S. Army Redstone Test Center (RTC) successfully deployed a Voisus Unified Communications system at the RTC Mission Operations Control Center (MOCC) earlier this year. The Voisus system serves to integrate diverse communications end-points to deliver mission-critical, always-available voice services for communication between test range, mission command and control staff, flight test logistics staff, pilots, and emergency first responders using network-connected tactical radios, public or private telephones, and computers.

The Army awarded the MOCC communications modernization contract to ASTi by reason of superior ratings on multiple factors, including a long track record of field-proven mission-critical performance, price and projected lifecycle costs, expedited commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) equipment availability, ease of integration with existing infrastructure, reduced migration costs, and a system architecture that enables expansion that is limited only by network constraints.

The Voisus system installed at Redstone Arsenal replaced a legacy voice communication system called Distributed Scalable AccessNet (DSAN), which had reached the end of its product life cycle. RTC staff, with assistance from ASTi’s application engineers, executed an incredibly rapid fielding schedule and achieved installation, validation testing, and training in just five days. Upon completion of fielding tasks, the test center staff performed an immediate system-wide activation, shutting off the legacy system and bringing the Voisus system online.

Voisus provides a wealth of services to achieve radio interoperability, telephony integration, and simplified conferencing:

• Seamless voice communications coverage links an array of sources such as public switched telephone network (PSTN), internal calling and conferencing, group collaboration intercoms, text chat, networked Radio-over-IP interfaces for air and ground-based military, and land mobile radios (LMR).
• Conservation of radio use: any number of operators can share access to radio assets through network connections. For example, traffic from a single, ground-based radio can be accessed by scores of staff using the Voisus communications client running on their computers, avoiding the need for operators to access a central workstation.
• Radio patching quickly establishes interoperability between disparate radio systems.
• Remote radio control allows system administrators to use a web interface to reach across the network, adjust settings, and monitor the health and status of downrange radios. This powerful remote management capability allows the Army to quickly diagnose and remedy communications issues using minimal, centrally-located staff.
• The tactical communications archive & retrieval system is a "black box" for voice comms intended to support incident investigations with one-click voice instant replay.
• Resiliency options provide superior reliability; a hard-disk RAID and redundant server configurations with auto-load balancing provide failover protection.
• ASTi's Information Assurance (IA) software maintenance program ensures ongoing compliance with the DOD's stringent certification and accreditation processes.
• The system boasts built-in interoperability with training and simulation assets and exercises via DIS and HLA protocols.

About the Redstone Test Center (RTC)

The U.S. Army Redstone Test Center (RTC) is a subordinate unit of the the Army Test and Evaluation Command (ATEC) that provides technical expertise and state-of-the-art facilities and capabilities to support independent testing, evaluations, assessments, and experiments to ensure the safety, performance, and reliability of aviation, missile, and sensors systems. In addition to supporting Army acquisition efforts, the RTC supports all other U.S. military branches, the Department of Homeland Security, NASA, coalition partners, and industry.

About ASTi

Since 1989, ASTi has been at the forefront of distributed voice innovation, delivering products that unify voice communications across operational and training environments for the military, civil agency and commercial marketplaces. Over the past 35 years, ASTi has fielded over 11,985 systems at more than 800 installation sites in the U.S. and 49 other countries. To learn more about ASTi, please visit www.asti-usa.com.