Army receives last Teammate

Courtesy Photo | AN/TRQ-32 TEAMMATE interior operator positions (courtesy photo).  

FORT HUACHUCA, AZ, UNITED STATES

01.03.2023

Courtesy Story

U.S. Army Intelligence Center of Excellence

by Lori S. Stewart, USAICoE Command Historian

In January 1989, the Army accepted the final three AN/TRQ-32 Teammate mobile, ground-based communication intercept and direction-finding systems. The backbone of the Army’s tactical signals intelligence capability in the 1990s, Teammate was first fielded in 1988, eventually to the Army’s Combat Electronic Warfare and Intelligence units in corps, divisions, separate brigades, and armored cavalry regiments.

The Teammate began development in the early 1980s as a product improvement of the TRQ-32 —the “Turkey 32” — radio receiving set to give it improved technical capability and mobility. In addition to providing a quick-erect pneumatic/hydraulic, twenty-five-foot antenna mast, the new system had an onboard power generator and air conditioner driven hydraulically from the M1028A1 commercial utility/cargo vehicle on which it was mounted. In later versions, it was contained in a S-457B/G shelter mounted on an M-880 cargo truck and still later in a High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle.

The January 1989 deliveries completed the Operator Terminal Update program, which incorporated GRID microcomputers into the two operator positions and installed a fifteen-megabit disk drive for data storage. The addition of an ultra-high-frequency band to the system’s previous high and very-high-frequency (HF/VHF) enhanced its communications intercept capability out to thirty kilometers. Ultimately, Teammate could operate alone or be netted to four systems for increased direction-finding accuracy. It could also interoperate with the AN/TSQ-138 Trailblazer communications intercept system, AN/ALQ-151(V)2 QUICKFIX IIB intercept and jamming system, and the AN/PRD-12 Lightweight Man-Transportable Radio Direction Finder System.

Used in both Operation Desert Storm and in Operation Allied Force in Kosovo, the Teammate —along with several other aging systems — was replaced by the Prophet system beginning in the early 2000s.

• Date Taken: 01.03.2023
• Date Posted: 01.03.2023 10:44
• Story ID: 436208
• Location: FORT HUACHUCA, AZ, US