The US Navy has contracted two radio frequency (RF) power specialists, Milpower Incorporated and Elbit Systems, to provide RF power amplifier technology for the navy’s digital modular radio (DMR) military RF system.

The DMR is a compact, multichannel standard software-defined radio that provides several radio communications waveforms and multilevel information security for voice and data communications.

Milpower will provide 100W and 200W power amplifiers under a $17.7m contract while Elbit will provide 100W power amplifiers for the DMR system under a $11.4m contract.

Digital modular radios operate aboard the navy’s surface and subsurface vessels, fixed sites and other DoD communication platforms using frequencies ranging from 2MHz to 2GHz.

Work will be carried at the respective company facilities in California and Florida, and is expected to be complete by September 2014.