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Building a trusted decision infrastructure requires a new degree of public/private collaboration on bringing commercial innovation into defense communications systems
I recently had the opportunity to chair RCR Tech‘s Defense Communications Forum — available on demand here — which brought together global stakeholders from the public and private sectors to discuss challenges and opportunities associated with the communications and technology systems that underpin modern defense and security. Throughout the program, it became clear that there’s a sweeping need for a broad modernization of defense communications; networks are becoming the sensing, compute, coordination and decision infrastructure that modern missions depend on. At the same time, those networks are operating environments where spectrum is contested, commercial infrastructure is indispensable and vulnerable, and communications are now day-one targets.
Based on input from U.S. Department of War, U.S. Navy, U.S. Marine Corps, NATO and European Union member states, an underlying issue — which is further complicated by geopolitical instability and the drive for technological sovereignty — is operational trust. Defense communications architectures need to integrate mass-market commercial technologies, existing deployed infrastructure and heterogeneous transport. In this case, interoperability, security and failure tolerance are non-negotiable design requirements. For governments and militaries, there’s an acknowledged need to send clear demand signals to the industry.
Another common thread was the importance of resiliency which is, notably, related to but distinct from redundancy. Mission resilience requires defense networks to be designed as secure, multi-modal fabric rather than single-purpose systems. User-centricity is a priority that should span from applications and data running across public and private cellular networks, fiber, SD-WAN, multi-orbit satellite systems and complex, proprietary and expensive radar implementations. Security, visibility, failover and interoperability must be engineered in from the start.
In terms of new technologies, there’s significant interest in integrated sensing and communications (ISAC), which is considered an anchor use case for future 6G networks. At a high-level, ISAC could use channel state information to sense movement and environmental change using the same spectrum and infrastructure used for cellular infrastructure; specifically, drone detection is the priority. To realize the vision of ISAC, there needs to be alignment of incentives between private sector users and public network operators. For ISAC deployment to be economically viable at scale, there needs to be non-defense use cases that would help operators justify the capital lift needed to stand up ISAC.
Cohere Technologies SVP of Strategy Anton Monk put it this way: “The risk of just accepting ‘good enough’ is that there are real national security concerns present, and we should be doing everything we can for these types of critical use cases.”
Test, measurement and service assurance — established in a manner that creates a learning loop that links lab work with field reality — is the key to supporting rapid field deployment. Tactical networks must be tested for end-to-end failure, interference and contested RF conditions. The lab-to-field discipline has to meet the dynamic needs of mission critical workflows so users can be confident that technology systems can stand up under pressure.
“Speeding up the path from lab-based prototyping to field capability largely translates to pulling higher-fidelity, higher-coverage, and more realistic testing earlier in the system development cycle,” Emerson’s Chris Behnke, director of aerospace and defense RF test and validation systems, explained.
In mirroring an AI era trend playing out in essentially every industry, technological advantage is also a function of an operating model that considers the changing relationship between people and increasingly autonomous, AI-based decision making. Defense organizations need a repeatable way to align requirements, software platforms, standards, procurement, testing and other factors so commercial innovation can be absorbed at mission speed.
For a deep dive into key takeaways and commentary from the form, read the report, Defense Communications Market Pulse — from trusted connectivity to mission advantage.
