Young Bang Says Data Management Improvements Lead to Enhanced 5G Adoption Capacity

The U.S. Army’s principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition, logistics and technology said the military needs to rethink its data management strategy to accommodate more 5G technologies and objectives.

Speaking at the NTIA’s Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference, Young Bang, a past Potomac Officers Club speaker, shared that while 5G offers bandwidth improvements, certain applications consume significantly more volumes of bandwidth. The Army official said embracing secure and open architecture, application programming interface and standards would allow warfighters to make the most out of next-generation communications and promote interoperability.

The U.S. armed forces can also benefit from private-public partnerships to get the most out of 5G and future-generation data and communications technologies, the National Defense Magazine reported Wednesday.

The U.S. military has been working with the private industry to secure 5G technologies.

In September, Lockheed Martin delivered a 5G testbed prototype version of the Open Systems Interoperable and Reconfigurable Infrastructure Solution to the U.S. Marine Corps designed to support communications-related experimentation. In August, the Department of Defense awarded RTX a potential two-year, $6.6 million contract to develop the Opportunistic eXtemporarY 5G Encrypted Network capability, which would provide ad-hoc 5G connectivity to warfighters in the field.