As the military continues to experiment and deploy new technologies, it becomes increasingly important to ensure that soldiers are trained in the way they are expected to be trained in both peacetime and conflict situations. However, most military training bases are located in remote locations and lack the utility network coverage needed for things like augmented reality and virtual reality (AR/VR) to conduct drone and connected warfighter training. You can’t do that either. That’s why it’s important to consider 5G private networks to recreate real-world environments and get the advanced connectivity and bandwidth needed to meet today’s mission requirements.
“It’s difficult to build high-bandwidth connectivity across large military bases,” said Steve Vogelsang, chief technology officer at Nokia Federal Solutions. “That’s where wireless comes into play, ensuring we have the bandwidth and coverage needed to enable seamless monitoring of training exercises and advanced use cases being deployed.”
Before the advent of civilian cellular technology, most military communications were handled through push-to-talk two-way radio systems. They excelled at voice communications, but today’s missions also require text, high-speed data, and other modern communication capabilities that most people take for granted. The military must be able to use smartphones and tablets, cell modems, virtual private networks for encrypted communications and data, and must be able to transmit video for surveillance and surveillance purposes.
security concerns
Modern battlefields also require higher security standards. In recent years, combatants using everyday apps like FitBit, Facebook, TikTok, and beer-rating app Untappd on public networks have learned how and where they train, potentially jeopardizing operations or revealing sensitive information. There have been many incidents in which data such as , and other data have been inadvertently made public.
“So as long as there is a way for data to get out onto the Internet, there are security concerns,” said Robert Justice, Chief Technology Officer, Future Technologies Ventures, LLC. “So we keep everything very tight by locking everything down and forbidding internet access to the outside world. And we keep it all in the public domain where an adversary could inadvertently obtain that information.” Eliminate the ability.”
And security concerns go beyond operational security. Keeping bad guys out is just as important as keeping sensitive data locked up. Warfighters need to learn how to defend against cyber-attacks, which are increasingly incorporated into the arsenal of modern conflict. This became especially evident with the outbreak of the Ukraine war. Warfighters training to defend against these cyberattacks are not yet prepared to simultaneously defend against real-world attacks, and an actual intrusion could disrupt and disrupt their training. To mitigate these risks and control variables, it’s as important to secure your training network for inbound traffic as it is for outbound data.
training scenario
And the purpose of these training exercises is to replicate real-world communication as closely as possible in a controlled environment.
“When a brigade of 5,000 troops comes in, part of their mission is to win the hearts and minds of the people. So they need to be able to communicate with the local population in a realistic way.” Justice said. “So this cell phone network started as a way to represent the realistic communications that the military would see when they went into an area of operations. So this gives them a way to communicate with all these personnel. This allows the military to communicate with politicians, law enforcement and others during training scenarios.”
Since then, it has evolved to include things like drone and other unmanned vehicle operations, and AR/VR tools to support long-range training. The high bandwidth and low latency of 5G networks will make these technologies possible, assuming bases have access to the necessary spectrum.
The importance of spectrum
And this is one of the biggest questions when laying the foundation for a private 5G network on a training base, or really any base. What kind of access to spectrum does the base already have, and what will it need to accomplish its mission? Voice communications, text, images, data compared to AR/VR, unmanned vehicles, etc. Due to the low throughput required, access to different parts of the spectrum is required. But in recent years, the FCC has sold some of the spectrum owned by the Department of Defense to the private sector, and more such sales are planned in the future. This means bases may need to consider their lease agreements and/or reconsider what portions of their spectrum they plan to sell to account for potential future needs. .
“Access to spectrum is critical to delivering the bandwidth and performance needed to install private 5G networks,” Vogelsang said. “The Department of Defense has access to some of the 5G spectrum, but ultimately mobile networks will need to partner with network operators to leverage licensed spectrum and dynamically share spectrum for multiple uses.” We need to find a way to do it.”
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