I have been flying the scout mission for 13 years in many countries including the United States. There are very few things as important as being able to communicate with the customers on the ground. We have to be able to relay the appropriate information in an efficient amount of time to be successful. The UH72A has quite the array of communication equipment, but there are still gaps in the coverage. The mission of the UH72A in the Security and Support battalions is heavily loaded with civil support. Technology has advanced considerably since the production of the current communications package. Law enforcement and federal agencies have been on top of the technology shift including radios that have proprietary software and proprietary encoding.

Observation 1: Communications Interoperability of the UH72A due to outdated communications and the array of commercial equipment available to the civil community.

Discussion: Currently in the UH72A we have 2 Garmin VHF radios, 1 ARC231 FM/VHF/UHF capable of single channel/frequency hopping/Havquick, and 2 Colbahm radios of single channel FM/VHF/UHF with tone codes (squelch codes). That package worked accordingly on a year 2005 level. Since that time there have been major development in frequency discretion and encoding. The manufacturer of the communication equipment elects to develop software and coding that is discrete to that manufacturer. The discrete coding and software poses an intercommunication issues between other radios on the market and in the field. This typically happens with the federal agencies that seem to acquire more funds for technology than state and local agencies.

Recommendation: Since there are so many different manufacturers producing different software and encoding it is not feasible to install all necessary radios to cover the spectrum. One solution is one piece of equipment that will be