From Field Phones to 5G: The Evolution of Military Radio and Telecommunications
Field telephones were standard on the battlefield from the 1910s through the 1980s, with the EE-8 field telephone (1930s–Vietnam) offering a 7-mile range. The SCR-300 Walkie-Talkie, developed by Galvin Manufacturing (Motorola) in 1940, was the first backpack FM radio with about a 3-mile range. SINCGARS, fielded by the U.S. Army in the late 1980s, has 2320 channels in the 30–87.975 MHz range and introduced frequency hopping to defeat jammers. The AN/PRC-148 MBITR multiband SDR is a widely deployed handheld radio, covering 30–512 MHz and with over 22,000 units deployed since 2009. The Mobile Subscriber Equipment (MSE) system, deployed in the