Military and industry panelists at SATELLITE 2023 debated the adaptations needed to bring commercial 5G into military communications, with spectrum, standards, and open architecture as the central challenges.
Brig. Gen. Steve Butow of the U.S. Defense Innovation Unit said the DoD is “waking up and seeing the value of getting commercial services. We need more agility.” He cautioned, however, that “standards stifle innovation,” preferring industry-driven standards to emerge from competition before governments adopt them.
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Col. Joseph “Ward” Roberts of U.S. Army PEO C3T said 5G enables every networked soldier to both generate and consume data, and because it is a commercial standard adopted across the world, it creates coalition interoperability: “That gives us a tremendous opportunity to connect through a commercial infrastructure to our coalition partners.”
Dawna Morningstar of Lockheed Martin emphasized standards as the underpinning for commercial-government interoperability: “We need to get out of this mentality of building proprietary stovepipes, and embrace the standards committed to advancing them.” Rick Lober of Hughes noted a full interoperable 5G standard — one where any phone connects on multiple networks — has not yet been announced.
Butow described a “very disruptive” DoD prototype for a hybrid space architecture: “secured, assured, low latency multipath communications that can support a broad range of capabilities — not just LEO, this is all orbits, including the stratosphere, and then how it seamlessly ties into terrestrial life.”
Roberts closed with a reminder to design for the battlefield: “Don’t give me a solution for a guy in a white coat sitting in a lab. I operate with limited power, limited space, limited cooling, almost continuously on the move — in an environment where being detected can mean you get shot at.” VS
