The Military And 5G: Things Are Starting To Heat Up
By John Oncea, Editor
5G will play a key role in the future success of the U.S. military but only if it is deployed quickly and in a manner to withstand the harshest of environments.
5G and the military go together like pieces of a puzzle.* The military’s use of 5G is going to “enhance intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) systems and processing and enable new methods of command and control (C2),” according to Markets and Markets research. These enhancements will be a direct result of the higher network speed and lower latency 5G provides, and the U.S. and China – among other countries – have already invested heavily in 5G technology implementation of 5G.
These global investments by the military are going to drive the 5G defense market to a projected $2.487 billion by 2027, according to Markets and Markets. The defense market “is dominated by a few globally established players such as Ericsson (Sweden), Huawei (China), Nokia OYJ (Finland), Samsung (South Korea), NEC Corporation (Japan), Thales Group (France), L3Harris Technologies, Inc. (US), Raytheon Technologies (US), Ligado Networks (US), and Wind River Systems, Inc. (US).
“These players have adopted various organic and inorganic growth strategies to strengthen their position in the market. These include new product developments, contracts, agreements, partnerships, and research & development (R&D) activities further to expand their presence in the 5G defense market.”
Driven by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), the U.S. is expected to be the largest developer and operator of 5G technology globally. Beyond improving ISR and C2, the military expects its investment in 5G to “enhance augmented and virtual reality, modernize maintenance processes, and improve efficiency in logistics supply using technologies such as blockchain.”
*Don’t like that analogy? Here are about 100 more.
Show Me The Money
The Biden Administration’s proposed Fiscal Year (FY) 2023 Budget included a request of $813.3 billion for national defense, $773.0 billion of which is earmarked for the DoD. A sizeable portion of that money will be spent to continue to modernize and innovate, including the largest investment ever in research, development, test, and evaluation (RDT&E) — $130.1 billion. Another $250 million will be spent to rapidly field 5G solutions in space, airborne- and ground-based networks, cyber security, maritime domain awareness, and global logistics management.
As noted by Anritsu, a Japanese multinational corporation in the telecommunications electronics equipment market, “The DoD is pouring much of its 5G investment into developing data-centric networks and weapons systems that communicate with each other. A portion of the budget is to go beyond 5G and research next-generation technologies, including 6G. In short, wireless technology is becoming a vital piece of military and defense.”
But the DoD isn’t going it alone. Together with National Telecommunications and Information Administration, the FutureG & 5G Office in the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD(R&E)) has launched the 2023 5G Challenge. Sponsored by the FutureG & 5G Office and led by the Institute for Telecommunication Sciences division of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) from the Department of Commerce, the 5G Challenge will accelerate the adoption of open interfaces, interoperable components, and multi-vendor solutions toward the development of an open 5G ecosystem. The ultimate goal is to realize the promise of open radio access network (Open RAN) technology, an important factor in future decisions about updating communications infrastructure on DoD facilities under the base modernization initiatives.
“The Department is committed to supporting innovation efforts that accelerate the domestic development of 5G and Future G technologies. 5G is too critical a technology sector to relinquish to countries whose products and technologies are not aligned with our standards of privacy and security. We will continue our support of all necessary efforts to unleash innovation while developing secure 5G supply chains,” said Amanda Toman, Acting Principal Director, 5G-Future G.
Up to $7 million in cash or prizes – including lab time – are up for grabs for contents winners who show they can accelerate the adoption of secure networks, swappable and compatible parts, and what the competition dubbed “true plug and play 5G interoperability.” The competition is expected to last two years.
Why This Matters
“The higher bandwidth, lower latency, and higher data rates of 5G have made autonomous systems a reality,” writes Anritsu. “From a military perspective, autonomous technology will create new methods to protect forces.” This includes troop deployments, medical treatment, and intelligence gathering. “All these 5G military applications will utilize ever-more sophisticated RF communications consisting of more complex modulations,” Anritsu writes.
“For instance,” notes the European Parliamentary Research Service, “new autonomous military vehicles fueled by 5G technology could potentially circumvent data processing limitations by storing large databases, such as maps, in local clouds – allowing operators to control them from greater distances. Combining AI and IoT with the military applications of 5G may further change the overall dynamics for overseas operation deployment and traditional territorial defense.”
Other examples of 5G’s potential impact range from defending Taiwan to high-speed networking which promises to help bring AI to bear on floods of battlefield sensor data.
There are, of course, risks and concerns surrounding the increasing reliance on 5G. According to Spiceworks, 5G’s “biggest difficulty is also the greatest strength – more devices, apps, and services are delivered over the same network, offering a larger attack surface. Many of those devices are non-conventional endpoints like sensors, military, or IoT devices, making traditional security paradigms like updating operating systems and adding end-point protection impractical.” Those challenges are addressed by defining an end-to-end security concept that exceeds any previous wireless access technologies through a multi-layer approach.
Other challenges include the wide collection of suppliers needed to implement 5G networks, a lack of standard interfaces and immature technology, vendor-specific, tailored solutions that frequently target specific verticals and use cases, and the immaturity of standard and open-source software.
None of these are issues that can’t be overcome, whether that takes years or decades. But 5G is already in the military’s tool belt and will be relied upon more and more every passing day to extend capabilities of critical communications, deployed to respond to emergencies, and on the battlefield.