The U.S. Navy has ordered an additional 53 General Dynamics-built AN/USC-61(C) four-channel Digital Modular Radios (DMR) for use aboard new Navy ships, submarines and inshore sites.

In addition to the new radios, existing DMR hardware will be modified to accommodate networking waveforms owned by the government.

This order exercises an option on a contract awarded to General Dynamics in 2010. The option has a total potential value of $35 million.

"Serving the fleet since 1998, DMR radios continue to be extremely cost-effective. With these hardware modifications the DMR will provide even greater cost savings as it becomes interoperable with the U.S. Department of Defense's next-generation radios," said Chris Marzilli, president of General Dynamics C4 Systems.

General Dynamics has delivered more than 500 DMR radios to the Navy. The radio is capable of simultaneous, secure short-range and global communications on any of its four channels.

The radio is interoperable with a wide variety of legacy military radios and was the first software defined radio certified by the National Security Agency to protect information classified at the Top Secret level and below.

The Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command for the Department of the Navy Research, Development and Acquisition is the contracting authority.