Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is putting everyone on high alert. That’s why it’s even more important that the U.S. Department of Defense adopts new 5G technologies that help it communicate better and faster.
That was part of the message from Northrop Grumman President and CEO Kathy Warden, who addressed the topic during an Axios event on Tuesday. She also talked about Northrop Grumman’s partnership with AT&T, which was announced the same day.
AT&T’s work with Northrop Grumman is part of the DoD’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) Implementation Plan, which requires high speed, low latency connectivity across multiple terrains and domains to connect warfighters to systems, data and shooters.
As part of the JADC2, Intel this week also announced the extension of its strategic partnership with Lockheed Martin. Intel and Lockheed entered into a new MOU that “harnesses innovative 5G software and hardware solutions” to enable faster and more decisive actions for the U.S. DoD.
In much the same way consumers use 5G to connect to the IoT, the military needs a similar way to connect federal assets, according to Warden.
Platforms from the past were never really designed to communicate with one another. It’s similar to the situation in a home. If you had a refrigerator from the 1990s, it was never designed to be technology enabled, but if you buy a refrigerator today, you can go to the settings and get information about all kinds of things, including what needs restocking.
It would be very costly to replace all those platforms on the scale they’re deployed for the federal government. “What instead we’re working on is the ability to connect and interface," so that interconnections can happen without changing all the platforms, she said.
They’re talking about connecting aircraft, missile systems and more.
“We can communicate with just about every platform, sensor and weapon today but in stove pipes,” she said. “This is about connecting all of those stove pipes together, so having a backbone of communication that allows these assets to share information.”
One area of the U.S. government may sense a threat whereas another may be capable of destroying that threat, “but they should be able to share that information to work together even if they weren’t designed to do so,” she said.
The way it happens today is slow, and yes – sticky notes are involved. “I’m not trying to put 3M out of business,” she quipped, but at the end of the day, “it’s not a very efficient process” for people to be passing information through humans to get the work done in the timeframe it needs to get done, she said.
She indicated that Northrop Grumman expects to be prototyping technology with AT&T within a year. “The technology is not the hard part. We have solved the technology challenge in this area. It’s the application of it” on existing assets, she noted.
Technologies like 5G are important because when we think about today’s environment, “it’s less about the traditional arms race of the past and it’s more about the technology race of today and the future and I think that what we will see is that conflict takes on a different meaning” in terms of how operators engage in cyber space.
One area that she worries most about when it comes to the increased missions in space is how crowded it’s become. There’s a significant amount of debris in space, and other countries have the ability, with anti-satellite technology, to remove assets from space if they choose.
All of this means space is becoming an environment that needs stronger governance models and relationships between nations about what it means to respectfully operate in space, she said. It’s not a technology problem but one that has to be addressed through policy, she added, and oftentimes it’s the policy challenges that delay the applications of technology.