At the TechNet Cyber conference presented by the Armed Forces Communications & Electronics Association International in Baltimore, leaders from the Pentagon discussed capabilities for public, private and hybrid networks. Officials acknowledged there’s a natural appetite for the most exclusive, secure networks in the national security space. And sometimes there is no wireless network infrastructure available in remote warfighting locations far from population centers.

So as the services determine appetite for private networks that offer more control over information sharing, the DoD is guiding them to use open radio access networks, or ORAN, said Juan Ramírez, the director of the 5G Cross-Functional Team at DoD.

“I think what industry wants to hear is there’s actually going to be requirements that come out that … necessitate an open RAN architecture,” he said at the conference. “So you’ll start to see those come out in the next couple of years, pending budgets.”

Certainly, private networks aren’t the only way to go. In fact, sometimes that’s not the best solution, said Lt. Col. Benjamin Pimentel, who leads the Camp Pendleton 5G experiment for Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations.

“Think about when we deploy in a theater,” he said. “A lot of countries that we go to or locations that we go to already have roads and bridges, and it’d be silly to then go and build my own private roads and my own private bridges separate and apart from that to get where I need to go. If those roads and bridges meet my transportation requirement, and they’re not going to fall under the weight of a ‘seven ton,’ we’re going to drive over it.”

But, somewhere like the first island chain, for example, may not have adequate coverage to put up sensors for long-range precision fires. In cases like those, he said, it would make more sense for units to bring private capabilities.

Given China’s rising aggression and U.S. efforts to deter it in the Taiwan Strait, what Pimentel described is the type of environment where current threats seem to colocate.

Regardless, to ensure there is connectivity wherever the need is, Ramirez said the department is looking at ORANs, which allow multiple vendors to operate as one network and provide more flexibility to scale.

ORAN is something the DoD has been pushing aggressively to explore as it simultaneously journeys toward more standard 5G adoption on military installations and “smart bases.”

Ramirez said the department is hopeful it will get additional support from Congress via future defense spending bills that will backup forthcoming requirements with dollars.

The Pentagon’s 2024 budget requested $143 billion in research, developing and testing of emerging technologies including 5G, but also artificial intelligence. Much of the spending in recent years has been for prototyping, and though the Office of the Secretary of Defense has the lion’s share, Ramirez said his office is offering direction to the services for them to budget for 5G.

“We think that pursuing ideas like [ORAN] advanced by the ORAN Alliance all the way to fully open-source code … provides the feature velocity the DoD needs and the ability to innovate quickly,” said Pimentel.

The DoD has an extensive wealth of data. In today’s sensor-filled theaters, commanders can access text, images, video, radio signals, and sensor data from all sorts of assets. However, each data type is often analyzed separately, leaving human analysts to draw — and potentially miss — connections.

Using AI frameworks for multimodal data analysis allows different data streams to be analyzed together, offering decision-makers a comprehensive view of an event. For example, Navy systems can identify a ship nearby, but generative AI could zero in on the country of origin, ship class, and whether the system has encountered that specific vessel before.

With an object of interest identified, data fusion techniques and machine learning algorithms could review all the data available for other complementary information. Radio signals could show that the ship stopped emitting signals and no crew members are using cell phones. Has the vessel gone dark to prepare for battle, or could it be in distress? Pulling in recent weather reports could help decide the next move.

This enhanced situational awareness is only possible if real-time analysis happens at the edge instead of sending data to a central location for processing.

Keeping AI local is critical for battlefield awareness, cybersecurity, and healthcare monitoring applications requiring timely responses. To prepare, DoD must adopt solutions with significant computing power at the edge, find ways to reduce the size of their AI/ML models and mitigate new security threats.

With most new AI tools and models being open, meaning that the information placed into these technologies is publicly available, agencies need to implement advanced security measures and protocols to ensure that this critical data remains secure.

Pushing processing power

Historically, tactical edge devices collect information and send data back to command data centers for analysis. Their limited computing and processing capabilities slow battlefield decision-making, but they don’t have to. Processing at the edge saves time and avoids significant costs by allowing devices to upload analysis results to the cloud instead of vast amounts of raw data.

However, AI at the edge requires equipment with sufficient computing power for today and tomorrow’s algorithms. Devices and sensors must be able to operate in a standalone manner to perform computing, analysis, learning, training, and inference in the field, wherever that may be. Whether on the battlefield or attached to a patient in a hospital, AI at the edge learns from scenarios to better predict and respond for the next time. For the Navy crew, that could mean identifying what path a ship of interest may take based on previous encounters. In a hospital, sensors could flag the symptoms of a heart attack before arrest happens.

Connectivity will be necessary, but systems should also be able to operate in degraded or intermittent communication environments. Using 5G or other channels allows sensors to talk and collaborate while disconnected from headquarters or a command cloud.

Another consideration is orchestration: Any resilient system should include dynamic role assignments. For example, if multiple drones are flying and the leader gets taken out, another system component needs to assume that role.

Shrinking AI to manageable size

A battlefield is not an ideal environment for artificial intelligence. AI models like ChatGPT operate in climate-controlled data centers on thousands of GPU servers that consume enormous energy. They train on massive datasets, and their computing requirements increase exponentially in operational inference stages. The scenario presents a new size, weight, and power puzzle for what the military can deploy at the edge.

Some AI algorithms are now being designed for SWAP-constrained environments and novel hardware architectures. One option is miniaturizing AI models. Researchers are experimenting with multiple ways to make smaller, more efficient models through compression, model pruning, and other options.

Miniaturization has risks. A trained model could undergo “catastrophic forgetting” when it no longer recalls something previously learned. Or it could increasingly generate unreliable information — called hallucinations — due to flaws introduced by compression techniques or training a smaller model pulled from a larger one.

Computers without borders

While large data centers can be physically walled off with gates, barriers, and guards, AI at the edge presents new digital and physical security challenges. Putting valuable, mission-critical data and advanced analytics capabilities at the edge requires more than protecting an AI’s backend API.

Adversaries could feed bad or manufactured data in a poisoning attack to taint a model and its outputs. Prompt injections could lead a model to ignore its original instructions, divulge sensitive data, or execute malicious code. However, defense-in-depth tactics and hardware features like physical access controls, tamper-evident enclosures, along with secure boot and trust execution environments / confidential computing can help prevent unauthorized access to sensitive equipment, applications, and data.

Still, having AI capabilities at the tactical edge can provide a critical advantage during evolving combat scenarios. By enabling advanced analytics at the edge, data can be quickly transformed into actionable intelligence, augmenting human decision-making with real-time information and providing a strategic advantage over adversaries.

Steve Orrin is Federal Chief Technology Officer at Intel.

Before her trial, Naval Surface Force Pacific, or SURFPAC, quietly relieved then-Senior Chief Grisel Marrero from her leadership position aboard Manchester in September, due to a “loss of confidence,” the command said in a statement.

Marrero, whose online biography indicates a background in Navy intelligence, declined comment for this report. SURFPAC officials also declined to discuss further specifics of the case.

She was sentenced to reduction in rank to E-7 in March, according to a trial summary obtained by Navy Times.

Marrero wasn’t the only high-level relief aboard Manchester’s gold crew last year.

The Navy also ousted the second-in-command of the ship’s gold crew, Cmdr. Matthew Yokeley, in May 2023. The reliefs of Marrero and Yokeley were not related, according to SURFPAC, which declined to provide further details regarding the reasons for Yokeley’s ouster.

At a special court-martial earlier this year, Marrero pleaded guilty to willful dereliction of duty charge specifications.

According to her charge sheet, Marrero failed to safeguard the Manchester against operational security risks when she set up the secret Wi-Fi.

Such Wi-Fi systems are generally banned aboard Navy ships because of cybersecurity concerns.

Marrero “willfully coordinated the procurement, installation and use of an unauthorized and unapproved Wi-Fi system” onboard the ship between March 2023 and August 2023, according to her charge sheet.

Charge sheets state that she “willfully failed” to share a commanding officer’s suggestion box comment from a crew member about the Wi-Fi system with the then-commanding officer of the Manchester’s gold crew in June 2023.

She pleaded not guilty to an obstruction of justice charge, but was found guilty at trial, according to the trial summary record.

That charge involved an incident near Naval Base Guam in August 2023, where Marrero altered a data usage image on a chief’s mess Starlink account to reflect less data usage, which she did to “influence or impede” pending criminal or disciplinary actions against another Navy member whose name is redacted on the charge sheet copy provided to Navy Times.

Starlink provides broadband internet access to remote locations via an array of satellites.

SURFPAC spokesman Cmdr. Arlo Abrahamson told Navy Times that other sailors were also disciplined in connection to the unauthorized Wi-Fi, but he declined to provide further details.

Marrero also pleaded guilty to two false official statement charge specifications that involved her telling the CO that there was no Wi-Fi aboard the Manchester, according to her trial summary.

Marrero is currently assigned to Naval Surface Forces.

The Manchester was in or around San Diego, Hawaii and Guam at the time of Marrero’s crimes.

America is behind in this wireless arms race, and to pull ahead the Department of Defense plays a critical role.

Over five years ago, the DoD recognized the military value of 5G with its ability to enable seamless communications and control of – and between – everything: devices, people, and machines. 5G moves large amounts of data quickly and securely, providing the basis for accurate, rapid actions and responses. The problem: existing 5G infrastructure equipment was geared for commercial networks and supplied by non-U.S. companies. In 2020, to spur innovation and ignite American 5G supply capabilities, Congress allocated $650 million to seed twelve 5G pilot projects at U.S. military bases.

From these test beds, two success stories stand out: the Marine Corps Logistics Base at Albany, Georgia, and Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in Washington State. At Albany, a pencil-and-clipboard process has been replaced by self-guided material movers and an automated inventory system running on 5G, increasing efficiency, inventory accuracy and freeing up military personnel for more critical tasks. At Whidbey, automated jet engine inspections and a new refueling process run on 5G, dramatically cutting down aircraft turnaround time.

Both Albany and Whidbey use dedicated, ‘private’ 5G networks — meaning the DoD owns and operates them independent of commercial cellular networks — built with American technology. This tech provides two key elements required by the DoD to ensure a secure and viable 5G supply chain: Open Radio Access Network, or O-RAN, architecture and a software-based solution. O-RAN allows for components from multiple vendors to operate together as one network, so the DoD is not locked to one supplier – critical for our national and economic security. The software solution provides the flexibility to scale from a command post to an entire base, which is also not possible with traditional cellular hardware.

In April 2022, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee that “the Department is committed to making the United States a world leader in 5G by working with the commercial sector and fielding 5G to the warfighter.”

In the December 2023 National Defense Authorization Act, Congress moved past its reputation for sharp partisanship, and on a bipartisan basis advanced a major new policy that mandates that all DoD bases and facilities deploy a 5G O-RAN private wireless network customized to the specific bases’ needs.

All the pieces are in place – proven American 5G technology, commitment from the DoD to make the U.S. a world leader in 5G, and Congressional policy mandating private 5G networks at all military bases. The path is clear for America to pull ahead in the 5G arms race with the CCP: the DoD is taking the lead in developing American 5G capability and capacity, as it must. From there our superior technology can be used to win in the global market.

The next step is the most critical: The U.S. military must develop the requirements at each base so that Congress can fully fund this initiative and accelerate its rollout.

Joe “Digger” DiGuardo, a retired U.S. Navy rear admiral, is the principal for DiggerWorks Consulting LLC and the senior director of government strategy at Ocean Power Technologies.

A major achievement of unmanned systems is also their ability to gather real-time data. Eliminating time delays in data sharing means having full sight of adversary movement and tactics — a crucial advantage in modern warfare. Real-time video imagery, electronic and signals intelligence provided by unmanned systems can give a clear sense of the enemy’s posture and status.

In whole, the information available through the use of unmanned systems is invaluable for determining an enemy’s strengths and weaknesses, and making decisions on tactical employment. But the current discussion on the use of drones and robotic unmanned systems tends to overlook the pressing challenges of their connectivity.

Can unmanned systems be operated securely so that data can be relayed in real-time without opponent interception or interference? The industry has only begun to scratch the surface when it comes to these questions.

5G is no silver bullet

In the same way that the data provided by unmanned systems can only be as useful as the data dissemination process is effective, the technology will be next to useless if the communication network that connects it is not robust or flexible enough to cope with tactical requirements.

Drones in tactical scenarios nowadays are often connected using Wi-Fi technology, not 5G. In fact, and contrary to popular belief, 3GPP 5G technology (that is 5G commercial cellular networks) is unsuited to tactical scenarios because it requires subscriptions to a network operator and supporting infrastructure such as cell towers.

Alternatively, there are private 5G network architectures which are better suited to military operations because they use a dedicated (private) slice of the spectrum, enable a direct connection and low latency. However, the use of spectrum is tightly regulated and only rarely does the end user control the frequencies.

But all these challenges fade compared to the main one – the inherent detectability of all devices connected to any of these networks, be it Wi-Fi, 3GPP commercial, military sub-6 GHz or private 5G cellular networks.

Many companies providing cellular 5G claim they provide encrypted systems but the fact is unmanned devices connected to these networks are easily detected because they generally use spectrum and transmit power levels that can be discovered from hundreds of kilometers away.

It is a given that low probability of detection (LPD) and the associated element of surprise are often crucial for success and survival in military scenarios.

V-Band mmWave is hard to detect

IEEE mmWave-based networks provide LPD and low probability of interception (LPI), they are jam-resistant, and deliver high speed and low latency. This is why they are proving to be a robust solution for delivering connectivity for military unmanned autonomous systems.

MmWave technology exploits license-exempt, non-commercial spectrum frequency bands, such as the V-Band at 57-71 GHz, that is a 14 GHz swath of continuous radio spectrum.

V-band as the unlicensed mmWave radio frequency band has the unique capability of being LPD by its very physical nature. V-band wavelengths cause radio signals to resonate almost perfectly with oxygen molecules in the air – a phenomenon called oxygen absorption. The oxygen creates an incredible spike in attenuation that appears like a brick wall at a distance and creates a curtain of invisibility between a tactical team and its adversary. Within portions of the V-band, connectivity truly has an LPD quality.

Low latency is another essential attribute of a military network. MmWave networks deliver at least an order of magnitude lower latency compared to cellular 5G networks partially due to the point-to-point nature of the networks rather than the centralized network architecture typical for cellular 5G.

A trial of 5G mmWave systems saw this technology interfaced with the networking systems of land vehicles. This use case was then tested in a variety of simulated battlefield scenarios. The beamformed technology was proven to provide 360˚ communications coverage via mesh networking to effectively deliver undisrupted gigabit communications links between vehicles.

An IEEE 5G mmWave-based network is also resistant to a single point failure and self-healing; if the main PCP router is compromised, another node steps up, takes over and the connections remain in place. This is especially relevant to situations where swarms of devices are employed, ensuring that assets are protected and the secure transmission of data is safeguarded.

Limitation of mmWave

MmWave technology, as any technology really, is not without its limitations. As noted by IEEE, mmWaves cannot penetrate walls easily and their path loss is high which reduces the transmission distances.

The implications for military scenarios are significant in that IEEE 5G mmWave-based networks are particularly suitable for tactical scenarios in a high threat environment. For example, at a mobile command post or on the battlefield, tactical networks are subject to harsh environmental conditions, electronic warfare targeting and jamming. In such an environment, military forces need a stealthy tactical network with LPD and LPI.

However, for rear echelons, large military bases and in some forward bases, it makes perfect sense to leverage 5G 3GPP commercial network technology with appropriate security enhancements. It is also sensible to harden the 3GPP commercial technology to extend reach into the air and space domains.

In short, as the world is monitoring the two most recent conflicts in Gaza and in Ukraine where unmanned systems are playing an ever-important role, little attention is being devoted to the lifeline of these systems – their connectivity. The performance and capabilities of unmanned systems are defined by the networks connecting them and military forces will only be able to realize their full potential with the help of high performing LPD tactical networks.

Macy Summers is President & CEO of Blu Wireless Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of UK Blu Wireless Ltd

The Pentagon considers the development and uptake of fifth-generation wireless technologies critical to international competition and future military connectivity. Its deployment has been incremental, however, and global jostling with China’s Huawei and ZTE, among other players, remains fierce.

The 5G portfolio transition coincided with the start of the government’s fiscal 2024. The move was also in line with the wishes of lawmakers, who in legislation sought the change as well as a road map for the tech’s widespread adoption.

“We’re working closely together with [the CIO] to complete the research aspects of 5G that we’ve been running for the past three years, while they’re taking over the mature technologies that are ready for that scaling, implementation and transition to the services,” Thomas Rondeau, the Pentagon’s principal director for FutureG, said at an event moderated by C4ISRNET at the Washington-based Atlantic Council think tank. “This was part of the plan.”

The shift frees up Rondeau and others to examine what lies beyond 5G.

“There’s certainly a FutureG for as far as I can fathom. This is a moving sidewalk,” he said. “Roughly every 10 years, they’re coming out with another generation of technologies. What is 6G going to look like?”

The 5G takeover was teased earlier this year by CIO John Sherman, who said he and his team were working “left seat, right seat” with Heidi Shyu, the Pentagon’s chief technology officer, to ensure things went smoothly.

More than $600 million has been committed to 5G experimentation at military installations across the U.S. The fifth generation fueled smart-warehousing and augmented-reality trials at Naval Base San Diego in California and distributed command-and-control testing at Nellis Air Force Base in Nevada.

Sherman has said the experiments were fruitful. He also said he would like to see follow-ups, particularly regarding open radio access networks.

“This is something that we, at DoD, can help catalyze,” Sherman said in May.

The 5G ecosystem promises exponentially faster speeds as well as greater accommodations for more and more-advanced devices. The U.S. Department of Defense considers development and adoption of the generation foundational to its longer-term connectivity and modernization goals. Rollout and uptake, though, has so far been piecemeal.

“There’s some really exciting applications, of course for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance and command and control, but even for really intricate things like untethered virtual and augmented reality, things for live simulation and training,” Whitney McNamara, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said at an event hosted by the Washington-based think tank.

“I think 5G is one of those really critical enablers,” she added.

C4ISRNET moderated the Nov. 6 discussion, which also featured Dan Rice, Lockheed Martin’s vice president of 5G.MIL programs, and Thomas Rondeau, the principal director for FutureG at the Defense Department.

The Pentagon is pouring money into video game-like simulation and virtual reality for training, planning, logistics and maintenance purposes. The applications, though, come with serious bandwidth and latency requirements; laggy or intermittent feeds can break immersion or even get in the way of work.

“5G, when it reaches its potential, will be able to support immersive environments, where you’re in a 3D, virtual world with multiple other actors also seeing the same thing and interacting in a way that requires a lot more information to be moved back and forth between that compute environment and the user device,” said Rice. “Things like that, I think, you’re going to see unlocked with 5G.”

The Pentagon in October 2020 announced it was investing $600 million into 5G experimentation at five bases across the country.

Among them were Naval Base San Diego in California and Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington. At the former, 5G fueled tests with smart warehousing and augmented reality. At the latter, it powered virtual reality for mission planning and operations. Continued spending and tinkering would be prudent, according to the panel.

“The revolution that 5G is changes the game for the DoD,” said Rondeau. “Every single application the DoD has, every surface, every platform, has a niche requirement from its network. The ability to tune that, to take advantage of the different properties of the network, to fill those different gaps, is one of the really exciting things about it.”

Alliance officials hosted an exercise to that effect earlier this month at a test site in Latvia. The event, dubbed 2023 Next-Generation Communication Network Technologies, was organized by NATO’s Allied Command Transformation and the Latvian defense ministry to present systems capable of enabling multi-domain operations. The term refers to the seamless coordination of land, air, naval, space and cyberspace assets in military campaigns.

One of the focus areas was for demonstrators to showcase approaches to improve command-and control-capabilities with the use of virtual reality, secure post-quantum encryption and apply sensor fusion for situation awareness, according to a press release provided by the organizers.

Scientists have warned for some time of the threat posed by quantum computers to crack common encryption algorithms that protect military hardware and intelligence operations.

The sense of urgency has ushered in the term “quantum-resistant encryption” to describe next-level security mechanics.

Last September, the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA) released the future quantum-resistant algorithm requirements for national security systems. Considering ongoing pursuits in quantum computing by international actors, the report called on industry “to now plan, prepare and budget for a transition.”

NATO governments also have begun testing post-quantum solutions. In 2022, the NATO Cyber Security Centre, responsible for the everyday protection of the alliance networks, successfully tested safe transmission flows using a virtual private network (VPN) supplied by the British firm Post-Quantum.

A VPN can utilize different algorithms provided by the manufacturer to ensure secure communications by guaranteeing that only the appropriate recipient of the data can read it.

Another method allies have experimented with is quantum key distribution, which consists of exchanging encryption keys, only known between the shared parties, that can be used to encrypt or decrypt further communications.

According to a NATO report on the subject, one of the distinct properties of this method is that it allows “only for the intended recipient to decode the message transmitted, making any eavesdropping impossible.”

In 2022, through this approach, a NATO Science for Peace & Security (SPS) project aimed to connect Malta and Italy for the first time with a prototype secure quantum communications undersea link featuring submarine, fiberoptic cables.

While quantum computing technology remains in its infancy, the importance for military organizations and the defense industry to get started now is to discover flaws in algorithms before they spread, thereby preventing widespread vulnerabilities in the future.

The technology may soon allow malevolent actors to unleash pandemics, supercharge massive cyberattacks, and accelerate the spread of disinformation. More alarmingly, AI systems may evolve to deceive their human creators, establishing their own objectives in stark contradiction to societal norms. Generative AI is poised to cross thresholds we’ve never anticipated and for which society is unprepared.

This concern is not fear mongering. It’s based on the capability as it exists now and the speed with which it advances. Creator of ChatGPT Sam Altman anticipates superintelligence AI capable of surpassing an expert level of skill in most fields and more powerful than any technology ever developed in the next decade.

Dario Amodei, former vice president for research at Open AI and current Anthropic CEO believes AI may grow too independent for human control in the next two years. Finally, computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, considered by many “The Godfather of AI” resigned from Google earlier this year over concerns that AI may be more intelligent than we know at this moment.

Despite these warnings, generative AI lacks any governing body, either internationally or within the United States. The technology is moving so fast without any safeguards that the risks grow exponentially. The time to establish guardrails is now and the U.S. must lead in this effort.

Senators Richard Blumenthal and Josh Hawley champion a bipartisan framework for AI legislation that deserves attention. The proposal involves the initiation of a federal independent oversight body to manage the coming evolutions of the technology. This new U.S. government entity will monitor the sale, purchase, or transfer of computational resources exceeding specific thresholds. Microsoft President Brad Smith and the Center for AI Policy publicly support the framework.

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, warned the Senate Judiciary Committee on May 16 of a need for a federal agency that licenses any effort above a certain scale of capabilities and capable of shutting down companies that do not comply.

Given the catastrophic potential for misuse, the development of such a licensing structure for General-Purpose AI is a proactive step in establishing a gatekeeping mechanism. The structure must establish regulatory thresholds for computational prowess, developmental cost, and benchmark performance. As the technology advances, these thresholds must be periodically reviewed and, when necessary, updated.

While the Blumental-Hawley legislation offers a structure around which to build legislation and a regulatory body, it lacks any significant details. The concept must develop around regulation of the three key resources in AI development: computing hardware, talent, and data. All three are necessary for significant advances in Generative AI models. While any regulatory body would be challenged to track and legislate the use of data, a regulatory guideline can account for both compute hardware and talent. Capping either one, hardware or talent, would allow a safety valve over the technology.

Computing hardware is the currency of AI power. Access to high-performance Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) capable of enabling deep learning is a determining factor in the future of the technology. GPUs represent a physical aspect of AI that can be monitored and registered. In fact, massive amounts of GPUs are required to train models on large data-sets.

A regulatory framework must require a federal license for purchase of anything over an identified high-risk computer hardware threshold, for example, GPU sets capable of developing an AI that can process more than a septillion (1024) operations. The legislation must require monitoring and reporting of the transfer of any GPU sets beyond the high-risk threshold.

Human talent

Human talent is required to employ the computing hardware. Trained AI professionals train AI sets to unlock the next advancements. Talent costs money – a lot of it – both to train and employ AI scientists and researchers. Here again, development of a specific high-risk threshold, for example, $50 million in developing and employing human talent, is necessary for a regulatory framework. Any amount above the high-risk threshold must be reported and examined for possibly catastrophic use.

Meanwhile, to keep pace with the rest of the world and prevent stifling of the beneficial aspects of the technology, the regulation must include a fast-track system for benign AI applications. This system gets AI developers who aren’t posing any major security risks out from under the government’s authority. Engineers working on AI tools that are not dangerous – self-driving cars, fraud detection systems, and recommender engines – carry on with their work, even if they exceed the hardware or talent thresholds.

The U.S. cannot wait for the international community to develop an AI regulatory body. The Blumental-Hawley framework offers an opportunity for the U.S. to lead the world on AI regulation. International collaborations with bodies like the UK’s Frontier AI Taskforce, a team of senior academics appointed to advise the Tory government, can foster information sharing. Multilateral dialogues and global AI safety forums based on the framework will be pivotal in navigating the global challenges of AI. Over time, outreach to NATO countries should focus on the development of an international body overseeing AI governance, with a goal of incorporating the People’s Republic of China.

The Blumenthal-Hawley concept is a necessary guidepost along the world’s AI journey. It presents a vision of a future where AI is simultaneously safe and salubrious. By embracing and building on this framework, Congress has the opportunity to set a global gold standard for AI regulation. America, with its penchant for innovation and safety, is poised to lead the world not just in AI development, but also in AI stewardship.

Joe Buccino is a retired U.S. Army Colonel who serves as an AI research analyst with the U.S. Department of Defense Defense Innovation Board. His views do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Department of Defense or any other organization.

The delivery to Camp Pendleton, the Corps’ largest western expeditionary training ground, marks a step forward for the Open Systems Interoperable and Reconfigurable Infrastructure Solution, or OSIRIS. Lockheed in February 2022 announced it won a $19.3 million contract for the initiative, designed to study and proliferate cutting-edge wireless technology for the military.

“The Lockheed Martin-led team, in close partnership with the U.S. Marine Corps, has proven that quickly evolving 5G commercial technology can be leveraged in near real-time to solve current and emergent mission challenges,” Deon Viergutz, vice president for spectrum convergence, said in a statement.

The company is working on OSIRIS alongside subcontractors Intel Corporation, Radisys Corporation and Rampart Communications.

Fifth-generation wireless tech boasts reduced latency and exponentially faster speed, attributes the Department of Defense considers critical to future planning and communication. The jump in quality from 4G is expected to improve intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, as well as empower new methods of command and control.

But there are also concerns, including privacy, supply chain security and cost. U.S. adoption has been slow, despite global competition and a desire to box out Chinese influence and vendors like Huawei and ZTE.

Lockheed said advances in wireless tech are “crucial” to the Corps’ expeditionary advanced based operations concept. EABO envisions small units spread across a vast area — like the South China Sea — that are capable of blending in and scattering sensors throughout, allowing a larger force to peer inside. They could also ferry weapons closer to their respective targets and dish out damage.

Such remote or hostile environments pose a serious challenge to connectivity and the ability to relay battlefield insights. Leaning on 5G could help.

“The OSIRIS program is leveraging Lockheed Martin’s experience maturing vendor-interoperable solutions based on open standards, which will enable a wide variety of composable 5G solutions tailored to any mission and platform,” Viergutz said.

The Defense Department in 2020 launched 5G pilots, to the tune of $600 million, at five military installations. The efforts have at least doubled since and have even reached a Department of Energy laboratory in Idaho.

Lockheed is the world’s largest contractor when ranked by defense revenue, according to Defense News “Top 100″ analysis.