August 12, 2020 | International, C4ISR
The Pentagon has cleared 100 megahertz (MHz) of contiguous mid-band spectrum to be used for commercial 5G following a 15-week review, determining that they can share that bandwidth while minimizing impact on military radars.
While that 3450-3550 MHz mid-band spectrum is highly desired by commercial 5G developers, it's been historically used by the military for critical radar operations for air defense, missile and gunfire control, counter-mortar, bomb scoring, battlefield weapon locations, air traffic control, and range safety.
But now, leaders from the Department of Defense say the Pentagon can continue using the spectrum for those purposes while making it available for commercial development. DoD Chief Information Officer Dana Deasy said the department will move toward sharing most of that spectrum without limits while setting up a Spectrum Relocation Fund Transition Plan to minimize risks.
“DoD is proud of the success of the [America's Mid-Band Initiative Teams (AMBIT)] and is committed to working closely with industry after the FCC auction to ensure timely access to the band while protecting national security,” Deasy told reporters Aug. 10.
The White House and Department of Defense established AMBIT to free up spectrum for 5G development quickly back in April. Over a 15-week period, the working group was able to bring together 180 subject matter experts, and ultimately were able to identify 100 MHZ of spectrum used by the military that could be safely shared with commercial 5G efforts.The decision expands the amount of connected mid-band spectrum open for 5G development to 530 MHz.
The Federal Communications Commission will auction off the spectrum. One government official said action was expected by the end of this fiscal year.
https://www.c4isrnet.com/industry/2020/08/10/pentagon-clears-100-mhz-of-spectrum-for-5g-development/
January 20, 2021 | International, Naval
Lockheed Martin [LMT] said on Monday it has delivered its production unit 100-kW-range High Energy Laser and Integrated Optical-dazzler with Surveillance (HELIOS) to the Navy for installment on a destroyer later this year and said it has additional capability beyond... https://www.defensedaily.com/lockheed-martin-delivers-helios-navy-boasts-additional-capability/navy-usmc/
November 15, 2023 | International, Aerospace
NATO will replace its ageing fleet of AWACS surveillance planes, in service since the Cold War in the 1980s, with a militarised version of the Boeing 737 commercial jet, the alliance said on Wednesday, in a deal likely worth billions of euros.
June 10, 2019 | International, Other Defence
By: Kelsey Reichmann As AI becomes more prominent in the national security community, officials are grappling with where to use it most effectively. During a panel discussion at the C4ISRNET conference June 6, leaders discussed the role of industry building AI that will be used by the military. After studying small and big companies creating AI technology, Col. Stoney Trent, the chief of operations at the Pentagon's Joint Artificial Intelligence Center, said he found commercial groups do not have the same motivations that exist in the government. “Commercial groups are poorly incentivized for rigorous testing. For them that represents a business risk,” Trent said. Because of this, he the government needs to work with the commercial sector to create these technologies. “What the Defense Department has to offer in this space is encouragement, an incentive structure for better testing tools and methods that allows us to understand how a product is going to perform when we are under conditions of national consequence because I can't wait,” Trent said. “Hopefully, the nation will be at peace long enough to not have a high bandwidth of experiences with weapons implementations, but when that happens, we need them to absolutely work. That's a quality of commercial technology development.” For this to take place, the Department of Defense needs to help create the right environment. “All of this is predicated on the Pentagon doing things as well,” said Kara Frederick, associate fellow for the technology and national security program at the Center for a New American Security. “Making an environment conducive to the behaviors that you are seeking to encourage. That environment can be the IT environment, common standards for data processing, common standards for interactions with industry, I think would help.” Panelists said national security leaders also need to weigh the risks of relying more on AI technology, one of which is non-state actors using AI for nefarious purposes. Trent said he sees AI as the new arms race but noted that in this arena, destruction may be easier than creation. “AI is the modern-day armor anti-armor arms race,” Trent said. “The Joint AI Center, one of the important features of it is that it does offer convergence for best practices, data sources, data standards, etc. The flip side is we fully understand there are a variety of ways you can undermine artificial intelligence and most of those are actually easier than developing good resilient AI.” Frederick said part of this problem stems from the structure of the AI community. “I think what's so singular about the AI community, especially the AI research community, is that its so open,” Frederick said. “Even at Facebook, we open source some of these algorithms and we put it our there for people to manipulate. [There is this] idea that non-state actors, especially those without strategic intent or ones that we can't pin strategic intent to, could get a hold of some of these ways to code in certain malicious inputs [and] we need to start being serious about it.” However, before tackling any of these problems, leaders need to first decide when it is appropriate to use AI Rob Monto, lead of the Army's Advanced Concepts and Experimentation office, described this process as an evolution that takes place between AI and its users. “AI is like electricity,” he said. “It can be anywhere and everywhere. You can either get electrocuted by it or you target specific applications for it. You need to know what you want the AI to do, and then you spend months and years building out. If you don't have your data set available, you do that upfront architecture and collection of information. Then you train your algorithms and build that specifically to support that specific use case...AI is for targeted applications to aid decisions, at least in the military space, to aid the user.” Once the decision is made how and where to use AI, there are other technologies that must make advances to meet AI. One the biggest challenges, said Chad Hutchinson, director of engineering at the Crystal Group., is the question of hardware and characteristics such as thermal performance. “AI itself is pushing the boundaries of what the hardware can do,” Hutchinson said. Hardware technology is not the only obstacle in AI's path. These issues could stem from policy or human resource shortfalls. “What we find is the non-technology barriers are far more significant than the technology barriers,” Trent said. https://www.c4isrnet.com/show-reporter/c4isrnet-conference/2019/06/09/how-industry-can-build-better-ai-for-the-military/