On Monday, May 5, 2025, the U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) published the U.S. Department of State’s approval for the potential sale to the Czech Republic of a package including a large number of handheld, manpack, and vehicular radios, valued at up to 181 million USD.
Photo: L3Harris Technologies
According to the published information, the government in Prague requested the potential acquisition of an undisclosed number of AN/PYQ-10A(C) simple key loaders, AN/PRC-160 manpack radios, AN/PRC-163 handheld radios, and AN/PRC-167 vehicular radios, as well as compact encrypted RF-300M-DL data links, along with support equipment, spare parts, and support packages covering technical engineering, logistics, and personnel services provided by the U.S. government and the contractor (L3Harris Global Communications, Inc., a part of L3Harris Technologies), as well as other related logistics and program support elements.
According to the manufacturer, the AN/PRC-160 from the Falcon III series is the smallest and lightest device of its class available on the market. These NSA-certified manpack radios operate in the Wideband HF/VHF frequency range from 1.5 to 60 MHz for voice communications. They support data transmission over bandwidths from 3 kHz to 24 kHz at speeds of up to 120 kbps. The device measures 8.3 cm x 20 cm x 23.4 cm and weighs 4.1 kg (without battery). L3Harris Technologies offers two variants of the manpack radio: the AN/PRC-160(V)1 and AN/PRC-160(V)2, which use RT-2060(C)/U and RT-2061(C)/U modules, respectively. Both variants feature programmable Sierra II encryption certified for TOP SECRET, as well as Citadel and AES encryption. They are compatible with 2G, 3G, and 4G cellular networks and include an integrated SAASM cryptographic GPS module (or optionally, a commercial GPS transmitter).
The AN/PRC-163 from the Falcon IV NextGen series is a handheld radio operating in frequencies from 30 MHz to 2.6 GHz, supporting up to 200 users in a MANET (Mobile Ad Hoc Network) environment using waveforms such as TSM-X, ANW2, Wraith, and others.
The AN/PRC-167 from the Falcon IV series is an encrypted vehicular radio operating in frequency ranges from 5 kHz to 40 MHz and from 764 MHz to 2400 MHz in a MANET environment using the TSM-X waveform. It is NSA-certified for TOP SECRET communications and includes an integrated SAASM L1/L2 encryption module.
Last year, approvals for the purchase of large quantities of L3Harris Technologies radios were granted to the Kingdom of the Netherlands (up to 1.42 billion USD) and Germany (281 million USD), while at the end of 2023, Poland also received approval (255 million USD).
