I'm also more than a little worried that each radio costs $3500 when even milspec radios don't cost that much. I'm sure a simple FRS/GMRS radio with scrambler chip would have sufficed, and those retail at around $30 each.
I was pretty surprised to find out what "high end" walkie-talkies go for. This year at burning man, a couple of DPW girls were hanging out in our dome and one my my camp-mates started oggling their radios.
"Oh! Wow, I sell radios and those things are like $2000!" or something like that.
This is what a bunch of dirty hippies are using to talk to each other in the desert. I'd imagine what the Department of Homeland Security uses is probably even more expensive.
http://rf.harris.com/capabilities/tactical-radios-networking...
Add rotating encryption to the mix and I'm not surprised at all the competency level reported in the article.
And no, "a simple FRS/GMRS radio with scrambler chip" would not have sufficed. Public safety radio systems, even on a local level, to say nothing of a national agency's requirements, are a heck of a lot more complicated than most people realize, since there's a lot that most people, including most of their employees never see.
Yeah, but probably not all of the people using the radios have access to computers connected to the internet.
Even at my company, they restrict flash over the internet, so people can't watch YouTube, but that means we can't access training materials provided by our vendors in flash.
Shooting our feet into the 21st Century, already in progress.