An AT&T drone takes flight in order to provide 5G connectivity to defense contractors participating in the Advanced Battle Management Systems (ABMS) Onramp 2 at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico on Aug. 27, 2020. The Advanced Battle Management System (ABMS) is an interconnected battle network - the digital architecture or foundation - which collects, processes and shares data relevant to warfighters in order to make better decisions faster in the kill chain. In order to achieve all-domain superiority, it requires that individual military activities not simply be de-conflicted, but rather integrated – activities in one domain must enhance the effectiveness of those in another domain. (U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Daniel Garcia)

A drone takes flight at an exercise in White Sands Missile Range. The Drone is serving as a connective node for 5G.

ALBUQUERQUE: International telecommunications standards will set the stage for future electronic warfare, so the US must actively engage in writing those standards at the UN, Frederick Moorefield, the Pentagon’s Deputy Chief Information Officer, says.

“Let’s talk about partnerships. We must continue to optimize our engagement with the UN International Telecommunication Union World Radio Conference to ensure spectrum policies are favorable to US economic, science, and national security interests,” Moorefield said.

Moorefield’s spoke late on April 13 as the closing keynote for the Association of Old Crows EMS Summit.

Crucial to this task is making sure the international rules on 5G, a technology that has primarily seen use in the commercial arena, can accommodate military use. The Pentagon has invested heavily in understanding and developing 5G to facilitate everything from edge processing on bases to streamlining existing communication channels. Getting the most out of 5G means not just understanding the tech as delivered, but working to write the rules that governs all equipment using the RF spectrum.

“Work to make spectrum available for 5G is not solely a commercial interest,” said Moorefield. “DoD sees a huge opportunity to leverage 5G capabilities and cost efficiencies of the technology for a worldwide range of DoD operations.”

Accessing the lower 600 mhz band and 37 ghz bands are very important to the department, Moorefield said.

Breaking Defense has previously reported that the Biden administration might continue a Trump-era push on setting rules for space policy. It is possible that this same push towards reenagement could be seen in setting international telecommunications standards, too. As Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks said in her confirmation hearing, the Biden Administration is invested in “developing best practices, standards, and norms of behavior in space.”

“The United States should work with allied countries to establish international norms that enable a secure, trusted, and diversified 5G supply chain without creating fragmented or nationalized markets,” argues a recent report by the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a DC think tank.

Writing the rules at the UN level lets the United States not just shape commercial development, it could also yield returns in interoperability with allies. Moorefield spoke of this as a “whole of nation approach,” synchronizing Pentagon efforts with industry, the State Department, and federal agencies like FCC and NTIA.

“A key task will be pursuing coalition partnerships for EMS interoperability, to ensure future maneuver in EMS is not limited by non-US capability,” Moorefield said.

The backdrop of this renewed engagement with international law is, in part, the intense expansion of electromagnetic warfare capabilities by near-peer countries like China and Russia. That was a central piece of the Pentagon’s spectrum strategy released last fall, which sought to piggyback on industry advances. It also included a modest multinational component, coordinating efforts across the Five Eyes nations (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US).

“For us to truly harness the power of spectrum to deeply integrate our forces on a physical level for creating strategic overmatch for great power competition, takes an enterprise,” Moorefield said.