In recent demonstrations, Lockheed Martin and Verizon flew 5G-enabled drones to capture and securely transfer high-speed, real-time intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance data from aircraft in flight to geolocate military targets.
A joint all-domain operations approach requires advanced, resilient communications capabilities that connect current and future assets with leading edge technology.
Lockheed Martin’s 5G.MIL solutions integrate military communications with tactical gateway capabilities (“.MIL”) and enhanced 5G technology (5G) to enable seamless, resilient and secure connectivity and data flow across all battlefield assets. The result: the ability to deliver prompt and decisive action on the battlefield.
Fifth Generation (5G) communication systems bring more reliable, higher throughput and ultra low-latency connectivity required for edge devices and platforms, like autonomous systems, to fully harness the power of artificial intelligence. By integrating 5G with existing military communications and datalinks, warfighters can achieve more effective operations in communications-contested and denied environments and have access to data to perform their missions anywhere in the world.
Leveraging its industry experience, deep mission expertise and strategic commercial relationships, Lockheed Martin is positioned to help its customers field, scale and deploy this technology rapidly and affordably across all operations on land, water, in air, space and cyber.
Creating ubiquitous communications with a global heterogenous network-of-networks drives artificial intelligence processing and operational decisions to the edge, reducing decision timelines for countering rising global threats. Heterogenous 5G-enabled networks also bolster resilience by reducing single points of failure.
Lockheed Martin is enhancing commercially available 5G technology with military-grade network and transmission security features while leveraging the global reach of 5G to expand access to a worldwide network.
Our 5G.MIL® Program Pillars
Building Network Cohesion: In the 21st century battlespace, dominance will be determined by the ability to bring together high-tech platforms into one cohesive network that spans every domain – air, land, sea, space and cyber. When this network communicates and analyzes data seamlessly, it represents a force multiplier that is flexible, formidable and decisive.
Resilient Communications: The 5G.MIL system is a robust 5G-enabled heterogenous “network of networks” integrating all warfighting domains across military tactical, strategic and enterprise networks, leveraging commercial telecommunication infrastructure technology. Intelligent orchestration, data management, and redundancy provide the operational agility required to maintain communications in contested environments. Learn about Lockheed Martin HiveStar™ technology.
Integrating Existing Networks: Using multiple, distributed edge-connected gateways between legacy tactical networks, information can move through different pathways among platforms. Resilience is created by eliminating high-value single points of failure in the system. Learn about Lockheed Martin Project Hydra.
Combating Threats: Lockheed Martin’s 21st Century Security strategy is designed to help our customers leverage emerging technologies – Artificial Intelligence (AI), edge computing and 5G.MIL connectivity – to connect all assets seamlessly and securely in the joint battlespace for unparalleled situational awareness to enable decisive action.
Embracing 21st Century Security Technologies: We are accelerating R&D and engagement with industry and academia to bring new applications of advanced technology to support our customers’ JADO vision. This approach will securely connect our customers’ enduring assets with 21st Century Security technologies and new, advanced platforms.
Collaborating with Academia and Industry
A key element of our 21st Century strategy is to collaborate with innovative commercial companies, both large and small, outside the traditional aerospace and defense industry to leverage their technologies for military applications.
Technologies such as 5G, artificial intelligence, distributed cloud computing and autonomy are highly sought after by our defense customers. The commercial tech industry is leading the world in these technologies and we want to work with them to bring them into the defense realm. The future of defense innovation will be a combination of commercial and government-driven technology as well as large and small company innovation. It is not now, nor will it ever be an “either-or” activity. Rather, it will be a combination of the best technologies that will keep the U.S. out in front of its adversaries.
Our team has identified several areas where we are working with commercial collaborators to improve 5G’s security, resilience, interoperability and performance specific to DoD needs and requirements. Some of these relationships, such as our work with Verizon for development of 5G.MIL network prototypes including interoperability with DoD tactical networks have been announced publicly. Other strategic relationships are also in place and will be announced in the coming weeks.
Our approach recognizes that multi-vendor network operations and multi-cloud integration will be required. Our strategic relationships will help establish key team members that we will work with closely to develop scalable solutions, but our open system, standards-based approach is designed for inclusion of additional industry players as well.
At Lockheed Martin, we are also committed to doing our part to grow the STEM talent pipeline.
We fund STEM scholarship programs, provide STEM internships and apprenticeships, provide grants to and encourage our team members to volunteer with nonprofit organizations that engage young people in STEM across the country. We invest in STEM programs because we recognize that it is essential to America’s national security in economic prosperity. And we recognize that our company and our industry will need diverse and robust talent in order to make our 21st Century Security vision a reality. We invest to develop that talent with K-12 STEM programs, university level R&D programs, and support for key STEM initiatives like robotics competitions and other activities.
It's important we accelerate the pace of industry innovation and encourage people in the STEM fields to apply their skills to the urgent national challenges that we take on at Lockheed Martin.