Fine-Tuning the Work Needed to Adapt Commercial 5G to Military Communications

Space-based 5G is a growing development with the promise of a big impact in military communications because of its high reliability, and its accuracy for communication and information exchange in remote areas where low latency instant warfighting data is critical.

A key issue addressed by the four panelists at the presentation, “The Role of Space-Based 5G in Military Communications,” is the work needed to address the challenges in adapting 5G for military use from the commercial product that exists today, and how quickly that innovation-driven adaptation can come together.

“I'll tell you this,” said Brig. Gen. Steve Butow, the Space Portfolio Director for the U.S. Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), and one of two military panelists, “The DoD is really kind of waking up and seeing the value of getting commercial services, right? Because we need more agility.”

Col. Joseph "Ward" Roberts, Assistant Program Executive Officer, PEO C3T U.S. Army, asked the question: “How can we apply the evolution of 5G, the technology of 5G, the benefits that 5G brings to that environment, and then see how the soldiers can use it and how they can take advantage of it? We are now getting to the point where every soldier on the battlefield is networked,” Roberts said. “He has capability to both generate and consume data. So providing a capability that allows us to get the throughput, both from scale and from a capacity to 5G, brings a tremendous opportunity for us to inform the soldier.”

Roberts further explained that 5G would allow data to go from the soldier up to the commander, so the commander could make timely informed decisions on such strategic actions as moving soldiers on the battlefield, or moving supplies around the battlefield, to get them at the right place at the right time.

“Because 5G is a commercial standard adopted across the world and managed by industry, a lot of our coalition partners can adopt that,” Roberts said. “That gives us a tremendous opportunity to connect through a commercial infrastructure to our coalition partners.”

What getting 5G really into the mix of military communications means now is advancing standards for all to be able to use it, according to Dawna Morningstar, director of Next Generation Solutions forLockheed Martin. “Standards is the critical underpinning for this commercial government interoperability,” Morningstar said. “We need to get out of this mentality of building these proprietary stovepipes, and embrace the standards committed to advancing them and driving them where they need to go, and then rolling them into our solutions.”

Butow had a slightly different take, something which he emphasized later in the discussion as well. “We feel very strongly that standards stifle innovation,” he said. “So what we really need is a lot of innovation before we establish new standards. But we also believe that the standards really come from industry, not so much from government.”

Rick Lober, vice president and general manager, for the Government and Defense Division of Hughes Network Systems, said that he has not seen an announcement of a full 5G standard yet. “One where you would be able to take, for example, a Samsung phone and an Apple phone and connect on multiple networks,” he said. “I hope we get there, because that's going to be important for the adaptation and cost,” he said.

There are other options for using 5G that are being tried out now, according to Butow, citing a “very disruptive partnership” with the U.S. Space Force and the U.S. Air Force. “We're prototyping a hybrid space architecture,” he said. “The goal there is to have secured, assured, low latency multipath communications that can support a broad range of capabilities enabled from the space architecture. This wouldn’t be just Low-Earth Orbit. This is all orbits, including the stratosphere, and then how it seamlessly ties into terrestrial life.”

It's a commercial solution that can support 5G, and he said that they are already working in an architectural environment where they can do things with new and emerging capabilities, like Sony's new 5G, that aren't even on the marketplace yet.

The panelists commented on the challenges they see in adopting 5G for military operations. “There's challenges in the L-band right now over interference issues,” Lober said. “So I think that, to me, is really the biggest challenge, which will be sorting out spectrum for 5G.”

Butow said generally, most military specific devices operate on spectrum that the military has access to. “Since the spectrum for 5G is mostly commercial in the United States, it's a paradigm change for how we would use it in an operator or tactical environment for training or anything. So definitely we have a concern on what we need to change from an army business model to understand how that works.”

He added that he thinks the biggest ask of industry is to migrate toward open architecture. “In doing that, you're creating an environment where we can do lots of business with you. Frankly, be open to collaborating with the companies that are in your sector,” Butow said.

Make it user friendly, and make it understandable, Roberts cautioned. “Don't give me a solution designed for a guy in a white coat sitting in a lab with a PhD,” he said. “I operate off of a tactical view, with limited power, limited space, limited cooling. We operate almost continuously on the move. We operate in an environment where being detected can mean you get shot at. So look at the use case.” VS