Olya Plan Enhancements to Ukrainian Army Manpack Radios

Olya has told MONS that it will add a frequency hopping waveform to its Agent-107 very high frequency and ultra high frequency (403 megahertz/MHz to 470MHZ/136MHz to 174MHz) manpack radios by the end of 2018. These radios have been in service with the Ukrainian Army since 2014, when production commenced. 

The radio was developed in response to a Ukrainian Army requirement for a cost effective yet capable manpack radio, company sources told MONs during the Defence and Security exhibition held in Bangkok between 6th and 11th November. Ukrainian sources at the show added that the price of similar radios from Western suppliers for the force had proved to be prohibitively expensive vis-à-vis the number of radios required by the Ukrainian Army.

The Agent-107 is used by army squad commanders where it connects the commanders to higher echelons, and can enable the same commanders to communicate with their squads, the members of which use Motorola handheld tactical radios. The company added that the Agent-107 has been developed with assistance from Motorola, although the Ukrainian company provided the software and cryptography used by the radio, along with other hardware and software. Olya officials continued that robust Electronic Counter-Countermeasure (ECCM) protection has been included in the radio as standard; this was an important consideration during the design of the Agent-107 in light of the intense Russian Army electronic warfare activity which has been witnessed during the Ukrainian Civil War since 2014. The addition of the new frequency hopping waveform is a direct reflection of the demand for enhanced ECCM protection for Ukrainian military communications. In Ukrainian Army service, the radio is used primarily for voice communications and position reporting, thanks to its integral Global Positioning System receiver. 

Thomas Withington