Military Looks to Add 5G to its Arsenal

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While the consumer and enterprise use cases are being developed, the military is on a parallel path of discovery into how 5G wireless networks will improve its operations.   

AT&T is building out a $22 million 5G network for the military at Nellis Air Force base, which spans 2 million acres of land and 5,000 square miles of air space. Nellis is one of five Department of Defense (DoD) bases chosen to host a next generation wireless network and the only one tasked with finding warfighting use cases, according to Senior Airman Isaiah J. Soliz, 57th Wing Public Affairs.  

The military is looking to create a “more resilient command-and-control environment” to support communications between pilots and on-the-ground personnel during combat, according to Soliz.  

The three-year contract will begin with a fixed network at Nellis, which will transition to a mobile network and then expand to the Nevada Test and Training Range, according to Col. Mike Driscoll, United States Air Force Warfare Center Director of Future Operations.

5G’s high speeds and low latency will also be used to support future aircraft, which will be increasingly software-based. For example, an aircraft’s onboard systems can be updated over-the-air, if they are being jammed by a radar, according to FedTech

Dan Massey, the program Lead of DoD’s 5G to NextG Initiative, told Federal News Network that Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State is building out 5G to support augmented reality and virtual reality training.

“If I tried to do my AR/VR training by pushing everything back to a data center in the Pentagon, I’m stuck with a number of challenges just in terms of bandwidth, in terms of latency. It’s just not going to work well,” Massey said.

The military is also looking to edge computing and the Internet of Things to improve the resiliency of its monitoring capabilities, he added. 

Defense One has reported that the Pentagon’s initial foray into 5G, which comes with a price tag of $600 million, includes smart warehousing at Naval Base San Diego in California and smart warehousing for vehicles at Marine Corps Logistics Base Albany in Georgia.

However, the research into dynamic spectrum sharing at Hill Air Force Base may have the most applicability to non-military users, according to Patrick Tucker, Defense One Technology Editor, because it would increase the amount of mid-band spectrum available for consumer networks.

 Experiments taking place are designed to allow high-powered radars to coexist with public 5G networks in the mid-band spectrum, building on the success of the Citizens Broadband Radio Service, according to Defense One.

By Sharpe Smith, Inside Towers, Technology Editor

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