The Department of Defense has a new plan to deploy its own 5G wireless systems at military bases and other operating locations around the world, hoping to fill gaps not served by commercial telecommunications companies, for example in remote and austere locations.

The new private 5G deployment strategy — signed by Acting DoD CIO Leslie Beavers on Oct. 16 and made public this month — calls for “accelerated” deployments of DoD-only 5G networks, but with a customized approach that considers the needs of each location.

In particular, the strategy makes clear that the department’s preferred choice, in most cases, is to use the trillions of dollars in 5G infrastructure that commercial firms have already deployed around the world, but that the military services will also need options to create. own networks where there are simply no commercial towers.

“A key aspect of DoD’s IT modernization effort is to use 5G networks, both commercial and private, to provide ubiquitous high-speed connectivity for mobile capabilities,” Beavers wrote in a letter accompanying the strategy. “Commercial networks provide basic 5G services to a wide range of users in densely populated portions of military installations…however, DoD recognizes that, in certain circumstances, commercial networks may not meet a of installation requirements. Private networks can augment or supplement commercial services because they are tailored of installation mission needs, security and unique military capabilities.”

Private 5G needs already evident in INDOPACOM

And since the launch of the DoD’s broader 5G strategy in 2020, the military’s experimentation with the latest generation of wireless technology has confirmed the need for private 5G, in, for for example, more remote areas of the department’s Indo-Pacific Command.

Kurt Andrews, principal investigator for the 5G effort at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii, said the commercial networks the DoD used in its early efforts offer 99.999 percent uptime. Technologists have successfully used those wireless links, for example, to connect quadcopters that assist technicians with aircraft on the base. maintenance.

“But obviously there will be places as we look west — islands that we call places, not bases — where maybe there won’t be networks,” he told a conference in Honolulu organized by AFCEA late last month . “We all want to be ready for that and we’re looking at the ability to design ahead, to bring 5G in that world. What would be great is if those networks that we design before also work with the technology that we use in public networks, so that it is very easy for the user. We could deploy fighters, give them SIM cards, give them phones, wherever they are operation. I think that’s our vision.”

More guidance, possible “core” network.

Defense officials said more detailed guidance on exactly how the military services should deploy private 5G will come in the next few months.

But the strategy also suggests that the DoD may be leaning toward an entrepreneurial approach to private 5G services. Exactly what that might look like is still unclear: According to the document, the department is still conducting an analysis of alternatives to decide whether the DoD should develop its own worldwide “core” 5G network or whether the military departments should buy their own private implementation”. as a service” from commercial providers.

The launch of the strategy comes about a year after the Congress he made his own push to get the military to adopt private 5G. As part of the 2024 Defense authorization bsick, Lawmakers directed the department to develop a strategy that, among other things, simplifies the process for commercial wireless companies to build wireless infrastructure on the ground and implements a modular approach that allows new technology to be introduced and upgraded over time.

5G open standards

To address the “modular” part of the equation, the final strategy builds on the existing Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) concept, which emphasizes interoperable radio standards, hardware-agnostic networks, and the incorporation of cloud technologies. Officials said they will encourage the development of an O-RAN “ecosystem” by prioritizing those approaches in the department’s acquisition decisions and by conducting more prototype work on how to adopt open-source O-RAN specifications such as RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC).

And defense officials have significant reasons to want communications networks that operate with secure and well-understood interfaces—whether commercial or private—especially in areas such as logistics and increasingly advanced systems that rely on AI algorithms that require frequent software updates.

“In sustainment, you can imagine hundreds or thousands of unmanned systems that need to be ready to deploy in a fairly tight time frame – but that deployment could take a year or three years, we don’t know” , Chris said. Murphy, a science and technology advisor to the Navy’s Pacific Fleet. “If I have them stacked in a repository, how do I support over-the-air updates to ensure that continuously developed software stacks are routinely deployed on these systems? The ability to leverage local infrastructure without having to deploy wired or more customized systems is achieved. This also gives you a lot of flexibility to move where these things are stored, maybe from a desert to a coastal city – you can take advantage of a lot of the local infrastructure to support this support… 5G and, in particular, leveraging commercial and public infrastructure. to support that, it’s huge.”

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