5G communications could improve U.S. military pilots’ sorties and allow ground forces to spot and outwit their adversaries, but it also could help U.S. carriers keep battlefield data safe from China. only if they find a way to keep it, said a senior Pentagon communications official.
The Pentagon is spending a lot of money on 5G (about $650 million over the past three years), but most of it is focused on supporting military-specific use cases for the next-generation technology standard, according to the Pentagon’s Thomas Rondeau. The money will be used for a test program to demonstrate the results. Principal Director of FutureG. The research and development needed to make 5G secure is primarily being done by private companies.
“It’s estimated that the commercial industry spends about $100 billion a year on research and development in telecommunications. That’s how they make progress,” Rondeau said at an Atlantic Council event.
This is good news for the Department of Defense. He is leading the industry in making 5G safer. What DOD can provide is the opportunity to test and experiment to demonstrate his 5G technology, which could also have value in commercial areas such as smart warehouses.
The Pentagon is also experimenting with how 5G fits into battlefield scenarios such as fighter jet missions.
“The F-35, it’s a beast of a sensor system,” Rondeau said. “The amount of data that comes out of it is incredible. How do we make sure that by the time the F-35 is ready to go back on its next sortie, it’s reprogrammed with the data it needs to accomplish its mission?” Will I figure it out fast enough?
“Actually, how [acquire] You hand that data over to the people who run those algorithms, but do they understand it? We’ve been working with a lot of edge computing on the high-bandwidth side of 5G. that would help it. ”
Making the most of 5G on the battlefield requires innovative approaches to the electromagnetic spectrum.
“5G introduced the idea of using millimeter waves up to tens of gigahertz,” Rondeau said. “Now you have this huge opportunity to go back into that maneuver space and use physics… to use every part of the electromagnetic spectrum to your advantage.”
But the challenge of finding new ways to protect that data remains. This becomes especially important as the Pentagon turns its attention to the South China Sea.
Here, the U.S. military faces a major challenge. More data will need to be processed and transferred faster, not only between drones, sensors, satellites, and troops, but also among allied military partners, many of whom the United States cannot share everything with. Use that information. But it also needs to prevent China from accessing that data.
Rondeau said the Department of Defense is “working closely with the industry base to define new technologies that will help enhance low-probability detection and interception and anti-jamming capabilities within standards-compliant 5G systems.” .
open standards
Central to the Department of Defense’s vision for future operations in the Indo-Pacific is a network concept called the Mission Partner Environment. It is envisioned as a reception and redistribution point for all relevant data that may come in from the battlefield (in the case of the Indo-Pacific, a “field” of thousands of kilometers). Entities on the network – soldiers, operators, commanders, and partner forces have access to only the information that is appropriate for them. The key to getting relevant data back into the network is edge computing, an area where 5G could play a big role.
A former Pentagon official who spoke with Defense One said Indopacom’s mission partner environment is based on lessons learned from Centcom’s experience and is fundamentally different from how the military has exchanged information with allies in the past. He said it would be.
“According to the net-centric concept, this is like we have had in the past, having a personalized mission network. [bilateral connection or bilat] Between the US and, say, country X, that’s your Virat, that’s where all the intelligence sharing is,” the former official said. “If you want to start a new Virat with someone else or build a multilateral network, you’ll have to build a whole new network because there are multiple countries. So scalability here becomes a serious issue. It’s obvious. There are 60-70 of these for sale in various places right now. [combatant commands]”
Future information trading between partners should be less about creating network connections and more about regulating data on the network, regardless of its origin, former officials said. This idea is consistent with a security framework built on managing access to individuals, regardless of the network. The Department of Defense is requiring combatant forces, government agencies, and offices to change to this Zero Trust security architecture.
“You can leverage technology that enables the same isolation at the data object level as older net-centric methodologies. Therefore, you don’t need to have a new network to control access to specific datasets. Digital Access Control Policies You can use it to control access,” the former official said.
Many recent military exercises between the United States, the military, and Pacific partner nations have focused on that very issue. Eric Tapp, who runs the Mission Partner Environment program at GDIT, said the company was hired by the Department of Defense to build a system to help the military transition from data-centric computing to MPE. Tapp said GDIT is also helping the military better understand how to collect data in close quarters and during combat, transfer it to where it’s needed, and control access.
“We’ve built a system of similar capabilities that works to the same standards that these COCOM mission systems are operating on. So what this allows us to do is bring the edge capabilities and the core enterprise “It’s about testing the interoperability between them to operational level functionality, so we can start modeling the complete end-to-end enterprise,” he said. .
Tapp said GDIT is “working on future proof-of-concept demonstrations and integration of the capabilities demonstrated in Talisman Saber.” [exercise] With as many exercises as they can integrate us. ”
But the Department of Defense’s plan to use more of the electromagnetic spectrum for faster, higher-capacity communications means that U.S. telecommunications companies will have to do something about developing commercial and industry standards for future 5G networks. It assumes that you have the right to speak.
Rondeau said China, a huge player in commercial telecommunications with its own 5G industry, is pushing its own set of standards in international forums. Some of these have been described as authoritarian, such as China’s new IP plan to force citizens to register with state authorities before using the internet, potentially exposing them to censorship and prosecution. There is also.
Rondeau said: “Our ability to embed the right value and ensure that we drive technology forward is critical. And attributing value to technology is a controversial and difficult issue.”
