Recently, Hughes Network Systems (Hughes) announced that it has won an $18 million contract from the U.S. Department of Defense to deploy an independent 5G private network at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, Washington. This is another important landing of the US military in the 5G field, and it is also a typical practice of 5G private network in the military field.
In the context of widespread deployment around the world and the initial effect of digital upgrades on the industry, the main technologies, scenarios, and modes of 5G applications in the military field deserve our attention.
What are the characteristics of the 5G private network for naval bases?
According to public information, in the $18 million 5G private network contract of the Ministry of Defense, Hughes Corporation, as a “general contractor”, cooperated with many parties to promote the construction of a 5G private network at the Naval Air Station to support the base’s development. Operations, maintenance and aircraft flight management.
The signing of this contract was completed in accordance with the specifications of the Other Transaction Agreement (OTA), which is a contract signing agreement authorized by the U.S. Congress, which can simplify project procedures, reduce intermediate steps, and enable contractors to spend more money. It has greater autonomy and freedom in the development of plans and projects, thereby accelerating the progress of the project. The OTA contract was issued through the U.S. Information Warfare Research Projects (IWRP) consortium, an organization designed to engage industry and academia in the development and maturation of technologies in the field of information warfare to enhance the mission of the Navy and Marine Corps efficiency. This 5G network serving the Naval Air Station has the following features:
(1) Forming integrated air-space-ground service with satellite communication
Hughes executives pointed out that under the three-year contract, Hughes will provide the U.S. Department of Defense with 5G infrastructure, including core network, radio access network, edge cloud, security and network management solutions, and provide elastic network for base operations. Support, realize process/system automation and continuous optimization based on 5G network. The private network uses Low Earth Orbit (LEO) and Geostationary Orbit (GEO) satellite connections to enable seamless network connectivity anywhere in the world.
Looking at the history of Hughes Network Systems, the company has more than 50 years of experience in satellite and multiple transmission technologies and networks, providing broadband equipment, services and network operations to customers. Hughes is also a professional satellite operator and a leader in the global satellite terminal market. For example, Hughes’ JUPITER system provides Internet access to tens of millions of users worldwide, and Hughes is also a major investor in OneWeb, a London-based satellite communications provider.
With this background, in addition to the ground network infrastructure, this 5G private network project of the Ministry of Defense will also realize the integration of air-space and ground services, which is also in line with the communication needs of naval air bases.
(2) Use the spectrum resources of operator Dish Wireless
According to press release materials, the project does not use the military’s radio spectrum, but instead uses spectrum resources provided by Dish Wireless. In Hughes’ view, Dish is the only operator that can offer a combination of low-band, mid-band and mmWave spectrum. Dish is the fourth largest operator in the United States, and the first operator in the United States to use the virtualized Open Ran model to build a 5G network.
So far, Dish has spent a lot of money to acquire wireless spectrum licenses in multiple frequency bands through auctions, such as the 50 MHz Citizens Radio (CBRS) Priority Access Licenses (PALs) that the company acquired in 2020 for more than $900 million. ) license, and recently spent $7.3 billion to acquire 31MHz resources in the 3.45 GHz band.
The high cost of spectrum resources has caused certain difficulties to the construction and operation of the Dish network. However, Dish once said that the wireless private network is very attractive in the potential value of its spectrum resources. The company has also cooperated with a number of system integrators and cloud service manufacturers to promote 5G private network solutions, such as AWS Private launched by Amazon. In the 5G plan, there is cooperation with Dish. In order to give full play to the value of spectrum resources, Dish cooperated with Hughes to provide spectrum support for the 5G private network of the naval base, which can be said to be a landing of its private network business direction.
(3) Adopt Open Ran standard
Another typical feature is that this private network is built using the Open Ran standard. The deployment of relevant supporting facilities has been launched in September 2021. The system adopts a zero-trust architecture and meets the requirements of the US National Security Agency’s confidential commercial solutions. Therefore, in the infrastructure selection, an open source wireless access network is adopted.
As the integrator of this 5G private network, Hughes has partners including Boingo Wireless, Cisco, Dell, Dish Wireless, JMA Wireless and Intel. It can be seen that the partners are all American companies, and they are all loyal followers and practitioners of OpenRan. These corporate goals are to drive combat troops to more efficiently realize data transmission and application through the 5G network of the Open Ran architecture. In the future, Hughes will continue to enhance and optimize the network support efficiency based on technologies such as artificial intelligence and machine learning.
The US military attaches great importance to the application of 5G in the military
The $18 million 5G private network contract won by Hughes is part of the 5G experiment being implemented by the U.S. Department of Defense. In addition, the U.S. Department of Defense 5G project has been launched in many aspects.
In 2020, the Pentagon awarded contracts worth about $600 million to 15 suppliers to build networks at five military bases. By 2021, the Pentagon has issued tenders for seven additional bases, bringing the total number of trials to 12. In its fiscal 2022 budget request, the Pentagon seeks a total of $393 million for 5G research, including $375 million for on-site experiments and another $23 million for “post-5G” plans that look at future generations of wireless capabilities, It is being implemented in partnership with the National Institute of Standards and Technology and the National Science Foundation.
With the support of these funds, the U.S. Department of Defense continues to conduct 5G experiments in various aspects, such as smart warehouses, advanced radar, augmented reality and virtual reality. For example, in September 2021, the U.S. Department of Defense awarded two research contracts for the “Information Warfare Research Program” to the U.S. satellite company, which will evaluate the use of 5G networks in the battlefield within three years and explore how 5G technology can enhance combat capabilities. Mainly focus on two areas:
The first is to improve the application software and services of command and control, using 5G technology to integrate C4ISR, networking and network security and other software into the tactical network to improve battlefield visibility, and will also explore the use of 5G to support ISR mapping;
The second is to deploy 5G networks for “agile operational deployment” operations in confrontational environments, seeking to achieve rapid configuration and deployment of secure 5G nodes that will help fight in unknown theaters.
As the trial progresses, the U.S. defense sector’s emphasis on 5G has increased. Earlier this month, the U.S. Department of Defense announced that it had formed a 5G and Future G Cross-Functional Team (CFT) to accelerate the adoption of transformative 5G and future-generation wireless network technologies. The move comes as Congress authorized the establishment of the CFT in the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act to enrich the cooperation and integration of the Department of Defense and the private sector to accelerate the delivery of new capabilities to the warfighter.
The Acting Chief Director of 5G and Future G of the Department of Defense mentioned that today’s operations require accelerated development of 5G technology and large-scale prototyping and experimentation. play a key role in capacity development.
This cross-functional team will be responsible for policy, guidance, research, development, and acquisition of 5G and next-generation wireless technologies within the DoD. It will also strengthen DoD’s external relationships through industry, interagency and international partners coordinated to ensure interoperability. The Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering will chair the team, which includes senior officials from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the Services and Combatant Commands.
The US military attaches great importance to 5G, in addition to enhancing its military power through 5G, it also focuses on system security, which often involves the view that China’s 5G development challenges the United States. As early as 2019, the Defense Innovation Council of the U.S. Department of Defense released the report “5G Ecosystem: Risks and Opportunities for the Department of Defense”, which directly pointed out that if China is in a leading position in the development of 5G, it will not only bring benefits to the U.S. defense system. This would pose a security risk and, more importantly, would directly threaten the U.S. leadership in 5G, which in turn would adversely affect its economy and national interests.
Therefore, the core point of this report of the Department of Defense is to prevent China from taking the lead, and to fully enhance the control capability of the United States in the 5G supply chain, to ensure the security of its global defense system, and to maintain its leadership and economic and social interests. At present, the application of 5G in the industry is in full swing, and of course, the application in the military field will not stop. However, the application of 5G in the military field carries further responsibilities. Therefore, the deployment characteristics of various projects are worthy of attention and in-depth analysis.
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