Viasat President: ‘5G has the potential to enhance the warfighter’s ability to produce and make sense of mission-critical data’

Viasat has received a four-year research award from the Department of Defense (DoD) to run 5G experiments in support of the U.S. Marine Corps operations and broader command-and-control applications.

The first phase of the award is reportedly worth approximately $10 million, with additional phases expected. The California-based company, which has a history with the U.S. military, having supplied it previously with satellite and networking capabilities, obtained the deal through the Information Warfare Research Project, a consortium that connects industry and academia to develop technology for use by the Navy and Marine Corps.

Viasat will investigate how 5G and other advanced technologies can support expeditionary advanced base operations, or EABO. Such operations include things like long-range precision fires, refueling, rearming, surveillance and reconnaissance.

In a statement, Viasat Government Systems President Craig Miller commented on the “significant potential for 5G to enhance the warfighter’s ability to produce, consume and make sense of mission critical data.

“The ability to swiftly move information and data across the battlespace is essential to the multi-domain and joint-force operations needs of the future,” he said. “The addition of 5G bandwidth and network management capabilities will support C2 for specific missions and greater visibility across highly dispersed forces in EABO and littoral operations in contested environments.”

The U.S. government is making numerous efforts to explore 5G and its role in everything from smarter military warehouses and logistics to military communications. Last year, for example, Verizon partnered with aerospace, arms, defense, information security and technology corporation Lockheed Martin to prototype, demonstrate and test 5G.MIL technologies for use by the DoD. Lockheed Martin’s 5G.MIL solutions integrate military communications with tactical gateway capabilities (“.MIL”) and 5G technology, delivering “prompt and decisive action on the battlefield,” according to the company.