The interest of the United States Department of Defence, and America’s armed forces, in fifth-generation cellular communications is deepening.
As Armada has reported in the past, the US Air Force is moving ahead with the acquisition and fielding of SEMPRE and Instant Connect’s T Node. T Node is a deployable network that provides a footprint of 5G coverage across a specific area. 5G technology is also integral to the US Army’s Integrated Tactical Network.
For those unfamiliar with 5G, it is a catch-all term for a set of cellular telecommunications protocols being introduced globally governed by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). The 3GPP is the international body that defines the mobile wireless network specifications. Those specifications are then codified as standards by the seven regional Standards Development Organizations (SDO). The SDOs include the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (Europe) and the Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (US). Low- and mid-band, and Millimetre Wave (MMW) segments of the radio spectrum have been earmarked for 5G. Low-band frequencies are akin to those used by 4G, typically 400 megahertz/MHz to 3.4 gigahertz/GHz. Mid-band encompasses frequencies of 2.4GHz to 4.2GHz while MMW inhabits 24GHz up to 72GHz. 5G promises increases in data rates, compared to current 4G protocols, which could reach 20 gigabits-per-second. Latency could fall from circa 20 to 30 milliseconds for 4G, to under ten milliseconds for 5G. More subscribers can be hosted on a single 5G node than on its existing 4G equivalent: Current 4G cellular protocols support circa 4,000 devices per square kilometre (0.38 square miles). This increases to circa one million when using 5G MMW frequencies.
FutureG
Alongside the US Air Force and US Army, the US Marine Corps (USMC) is eagerly embracing the potential of 5G to enhance Corps communications at the tactical level and beyond. In 2024, the USMC reported that it had used a 5G network to share track data from a Northrop Grumman AN/TPS-80 Ground/Air Task Oriented Radar (G/ATOR) S-band (2.3GHz to 2.5GHz/2.7GHz to 3.7GHz) ground-based air surveillance radar. The 5G network allowed track data to be distributed with ease to air controllers. A key attribute in this regard is that 5G protocols, and the bandwidths they offer, help share such data-heavy information.
The US DOD has an overarching 5G joint research and development effort known as the Future Generation Wireless Technologies Office, or FutureG. One of FutureG’s work strands is to explore the potential of 5G to support Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO). In the USMC’s own words EABO is a form of expeditionary warfare involving “the employment of mobile, low-signature, operationally relevant, and relatively easy to maintain and sustain naval expeditionary forces from a series of austere, temporary locations ashore or inshore within a contested or potentially contested maritime area.”
Tactical 5G
There is significant interest in within the USMC regarding how fifth-generation cellular protocols could supplement traditional tactical transceivers and networks. Lieutenant Colonel Benjamin A. Pimentel, FutureG’s director for expeditionary and tactical, told Armada about a prototype, deployable private standalone network developed by Lockheed Martin. The deployable 5G network includes a mobile base station, known as a nomadic tower, and a mobile relay node.
When the Corps is performing EABO, or other types of expeditionary operations, this ensemble can be deployed to provide a tactical 5G network. Lt. Col. Pimentel said that the concept of operations calls for the nomadic tower to be deployed in a static location. The tower provides 5G coverage across a range of between three and five kilometres (1.9 to 3.1 miles) and takes around one hour to activate. The mobile node relay can be moved around the battlefield providing a bubble of 5G coverage and is activated in around 30 minutes. Both the mobile relay and nomadic tower can backhaul 5G traffic to and from their users to other destinations within and outside the theatre of operations.
Lt. Col. Pimentel says that prototypes of both systems are “pretty well developed and established.” The next stage is to get this architecture into the hands of Marines so that they can experiment with it. He is confident this could happen by the end of the year and sees several applications for the technology: A deployed 5G network could support Uninhabited Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) performing base security. The prototype 5G network demonstrated that the bandwidths offered by 5G enable high resolution video to be sent from the UAV to edge computing running machine learning algorithms that recognise and track objects of interest. He says that experiments with the architecture have also shown that tactical radios, and other non-5G waveforms can be employed with a 5G core network. This will let network managers “chose the right waveform for the right phase of mission and connect non-compatible radios with one another, removing the need for interoperable waveforms.” The work that the USMC will undertake this year to ascertain the potential of the nomadic tower and mobile node relay could inform whether this architecture eventually becomes a programme of record. Should this be the case, it will mark another important step forward in the embrace of 5G by the US military.
by Dr. Thomas Withington
