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A small handheld satellite radio, which could see increased use within the military and a variety of federal agencies, is growing in its importance to one of northeast Indiana's major employers.

Similar to a walkie-talkie and just a little over a pound in weight, the rugged aluminum RO Tactical Radio is waterproof, dustproof and made to withstand the harsh environments in which soldiers must carry out their missions. It functions at temperatures as high as 160 degrees Fahrenheit and as low as -22 degrees.

ITT Electronic Systems in Fort Wayne began making the radios in small numbers during last year's fourth quarter. Their production has been ramping up gradually, to the point that 1,000 of them were assembled at the company's Summit Park plant last month.

That is important to the company's local operations because orders for its biggest product - the Single Channel Ground and Airborne Radio System - have been slowing down.

SINCGARS radios hop from channel to channel to provide voice and data communications that are secure and resistant to enemy jamming. They can be equipped with a military GPS receiver to report location coordinates.

Two months ago, the business celebrated the delivery of its 500,000th SINCGARS unit. The most widely fielded military communications system in the world has been such a success that Ken Peterman, who heads Electronic Systems in Fort Wayne, said at the celebration the Army will maintain an installed base of 488,000 of them in the field at least through 2030.

There are orders in place to increase total SINCGARS production to 580,000. But demand for the product has been declining, and in January the business laid off about 65 production workers. It had started the year with a little more than 500 production workers.

Some of the laid-off workers had been hired to help fill a huge Army contract ITT Corp. won a few years ago, which "increased our production tremendously," Tim White, a spokesman for Electronic Systems in Fort Wayne, had said at the time. Monthly production has fallen to about 3,400 from a peak of 6,000.

Information was not available on the number of production employees who have shifted from making SINCGARS to the RO Tactical Radio. But White said production employment could have shrunk by more than the 15-percent reduction it has seen this year were it not for work on the satellite radio.

Engineering operations bring the total size of the local Electronic Systems work force to about 1,250, which also lost about 50 administrative and support positions during the first quarter after the company reorganized its defense contracting business.

ITT also employs about 450 in Fort Wayne at its Space Systems business, developing and making weather satellite payloads.

The company has consistently exceeded Army requirements with its SINCGARS production for years. Bart Polizotto, a products program manager for ITT in Dulles, Va., said locating the RO Tactical Radio work in Fort Wayne provided an opportunity to "use all that experience and know-how to make this latest technology."

The RO Tactical Radio is being made in the same plant where ITT makes SINCGARS. It was developed for the Navy through a contract procured by the Naval Surface Warfare Center's Dahlgren Division in Dahlgren, Va.

It is being used primarily by the Marines and is "just now being offered to all the other areas of the military," Polizotto said. "Our expectation is it's going to be a high-volume radio."

The Defense Information Systems Agency has an enhanced mobile satellite service contract, and the radio is being offered through it to any federal agency or Department of Defense group.

The radio could be considered useful in a variety of military situations because no surface infrastructure is required to operate it, and it will work without the need to move into a geostationary satellite's line of sight. No one using it needs to expose a position to establish communications.

"With the typical line-of-sight radio, you need to set up an antenna to receive the transmission. This satellite radio has a four-inch antenna, and as long as you can see the sky, you will have the ability to talk with and listen to other radios," Polizotto said.

The radios work with the Iridium constellation of 66 commercial satellites, which are constantly moving in six near-polar orbital planes of 11 satellites each.

A radio on Earth links to the nearest overhead satellite, which is linked to other satellites in the network to carry traffic to and from one of two gateway stations on Earth.

The radios have data as well as voice capability, and users can link them to a computer to pull location information - including elevation - on all other radios using the satellite within a very large radius, which will more than double by the end of the year.

Users who have the satellite radios linked to a computer also can access information available from a Mission Management Center at the DOD gateway.

The radios can be set to work with up to five different networks, and because they are programmable, each radio can have hundreds of different networks to choose from.

"Iridium is getting ready to launch its next generation of satellites, so there's discussion of adding different features. This product is going to be one of a family of products that utilize satellite capabilities," Polizotto said.

The relocation of RO Tactical Radio work to Fort Wayne is "one product in a number of products and services we are pushing for as we transform our business here from high volume, low mix to high volume, high mix," White said. "We're going to be producing other types of radios and technology."