The U.S. military attaches great importance to it! 5G private network is about to be implemented at the U.S. Navy base

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 the Whidbey Island Naval Air Station in Washington State. This is another important landing of the U.S. military in the field of 5G and a typical practice of 5G private networks in the military field.

Against the backdrop of widespread global deployment and the initial effects of digital upgrades on industries, the main technologies, scenarios, models, etc. 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 US$18 million 5G private network contract of the Department of Defense, Hughes Corporation, as the "general contractor", cooperated with multiple parties to promote the construction of the Naval Air Station's 5G private network to support the operation, maintenance and aircraft flight management of the base.

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 that can simplify project procedures, reduce intermediate steps, and allow contractors to have greater autonomy and freedom in the use of funds and plan deployment, thereby accelerating project progress. This OTA contract was issued through the U.S. Information Warfare Research Project (IWRP) Alliance, an organization that aims to involve industry and academia in the development and mature use of technology in the field of information warfare to improve the mission efficiency of the Navy and Marine Corps. This 5G network serving the Naval Air Station has the following features:

(1) Forming integrated space-ground service with satellite communications

Hughes executives pointed out that the contract is for three years, and Hughes will provide the US Department of Defense with 5G infrastructure, including core network, wireless access network, edge cloud, security and network management solutions, provide elastic network support for base operations, and realize process/system automation and continuous optimization based on 5G network. The dedicated network uses low earth orbit (LEO) and geostationary orbit (GEO) satellite connections to achieve 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 satellites and various transmission technologies and networks, providing customers with broadband equipment, services and network operations. 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 around the world, and Hughes is also a major investor in OneWeb, a satellite communications provider headquartered in London.

With this background, the Ministry of National Defense's 5G private network project will realize integrated air-ground-space services in addition to ground network infrastructure, which also meets the communication needs of naval aviation bases.

(2) Using spectrum resources of operator Dish Wireless

According to the press release, this project does not use the military's radio spectrum, but uses spectrum resources provided by Dish Wireless. In Hughes' view, Dish is the only operator that can provide a combination of low-band, mid-band and millimeter wave spectrum. Dish is the fourth largest operator in the United States and the first operator in the United States to fully adopt the virtualized Open Ran model to build a 5G network.

So far, Dish has spent huge sums of money to obtain wireless spectrum licenses in multiple frequency bands through auctions. For example, in 2020, the company acquired a 50 MHz Citizens Radio (CBRS) Priority Access License (PALs) license for more than US$900 million, and recently spent US$7.3 billion to acquire 31MHz resources in the 3.45 GHz band.

The high cost of spectrum resources has caused some troubles for Dish's network construction and operation. However, Dish has said that wireless private networks are very attractive in realizing the potential value of its spectrum resources. The company has also cooperated with many system integrators and cloud service providers to promote 5G private network solutions. For example, Amazon's AWS Private 5G solution has a partnership with Dish. In order to fully realize the value of spectrum resources, Dish has cooperated with Hughes to provide spectrum support for the naval base's 5G private network, which can be said to be the implementation of its private network business direction.

(3) Adopting the Open Ran standard

Another typical feature is that this private network is built using the Open Ran standard. The deployment of related supporting facilities was launched in advance in September 2021. The system adopts a zero-trust architecture and meets the requirements of the U.S. National Security Agency's confidential commercial solutions. Therefore, an open source wireless access network was adopted in the infrastructure selection.

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 all the partners are American companies and are loyal followers and practitioners of OpenRan. The goal of these companies is to drive combat troops to achieve more efficient data transmission and application through the 5G network of Open Ran architecture. In the future, Hughes will also achieve continuous enhancement and optimization of 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 obtained by Hughes is part of the 5G experiment being implemented by the US Department of Defense. In addition, the US Department of Defense's 5G project has been launched in many aspects.

In 2020, the Pentagon issued contracts worth about $600 million to 15 vendors to build networks at five military bases. By 2021, the Pentagon issued bids for seven more bases, bringing the total number of experiments to 12. In its fiscal 2022 budget request, the Pentagon sought a total of $393 million for 5G research, including $375 million for base experiments and another $23 million for a "post-5G" program that looks at future generations of wireless capabilities and 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 US Department of Defense has been conducting various 5G experiments, such as smart warehouses, advanced radars, augmented reality and virtual reality. For example, in September 2021, the US Department of Defense awarded two research contracts for the "Information Warfare Research Project" to Viasat, which will evaluate the use of 5G networks on the battlefield within three years and explore how 5G technology can enhance combat capabilities, focusing on two areas:

• First, improve command and control application software and services, use 5G technology to integrate C4ISR, networking and network security software into tactical networks to improve battlefield visibility, and explore the use of 5G to support ISR mapping;
• The second is to deploy 5G networks for "agile combat deployment" operations in a confrontational environment, seeking to quickly configure and deploy secure 5G nodes, which will help fight in unknown war zones.

As the trials progress, the US Department of Defense has further increased its attention to 5G. Earlier this month, the US Department of Defense announced that it had established a 5G and Future G Cross-Functional Team (CFT) to accelerate the adoption of transformative 5G and future-generation wireless network technologies. This move was authorized by the US Congress in the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act to establish CFT to enrich the cooperation and integration between the Department of Defense and the private sector and accelerate the delivery of new capabilities to warfighters.

The Department of Defense's Acting Chief of 5G and Future G mentioned that today's operations require accelerated development of 5G technology and large-scale prototyping and experimentation. The 5G and Next Generation Cross-Functional Team will play a key role in promoting the development of 5G and next-generation capabilities of the Department of Defense.

The cross-functional team will be responsible for the policy, guidance, research, development and acquisition of 5G and next-generation wireless technologies within the Department of Defense. It will also strengthen the Department of Defense's external relations and ensure interoperability by coordinating with industry, interdepartmental and international partners. The Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering will chair the team, which will include senior officials from the Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Joint Staff, the military services and the combatant commands.

The US military attaches great importance to 5G. In addition to improving military strength through 5G, it also focuses on system security, which often involves the view that China's 5G development poses a challenge to the United States. As early as 2019, the US Department of Defense's Defense Innovation Board released the "5G Ecosystem: Risks and Opportunities for the Department of Defense" report, which directly pointed out that if China takes the lead in 5G development, it will not only bring security risks to the US defense system, but more importantly, it will directly threaten the US's leadership in the 5G field, and thus have an adverse impact on its economy and national interests.

Therefore, the core point of this report of the Ministry of Defense is to prevent China from taking the lead and to fully enhance the control ability of the United States in the 5G supply chain, ensure the security of its global defense system, and maintain its leadership and economic and social interests. At present, the application of 5G in the industry is in full swing, and of course, its application in the military field will not stop. However, the application of 5G in the military field carries further responsibilities, so the deployment characteristics of various projects are worthy of attention and in-depth analysis.