Lockheed Martin to integrate old military vehicles with 5G connectivity

News, US April 4, 2022 , by IRIA No Comments

Defense contracting giant, Lockheed Martin is set to secure the contracts for the U.S. military’s 5G solutions

U.S. defense firm Lockheed Martin has applied to test its 5G technologies at the U.S. Army’s joint military experiment project for 2022.

Project Convergence is the U.S. Army’s largest annual experimental campaign that focuses on coordination between the joint forces. Project Convergence ‘22 is a joint All-Domain Command and Control experimental campaign that aims to modernize military communications.

The first Project Convergence was conducted in 2020. Since then, there have been several experimental campaigns focusing on integrating emerging technologies such as networking, artificial intelligence, robotics, and autonomy into military capabilities.

Lockheed Martin participated in Project Convergence ‘21 in the domain of 5G communication solutions. The company fitted military-grade Hummers with 5G capable equipment and tested the electronics capabilities and interference around the military airbases and airports.

The company since then has been working on improving the technology in order to enable military vehicles to be connected with the 5G network. Lockheed Martin has named the new device as Open Architecture Processor. The tech looks like a laptop computer and weighs no more than a car battery. It can be integrated into any military vehicle in order to enable 5G connectivity.

The technology has been specially designed to be easily integrated into the older versions of military vehicles that lack such communication systems. The company is testing the technology with 25 years old vehicles at its Development and Integration Laboratory in Orlando, U.S.

*^{Lockheed Martin put 5G technology to the test during an exercise in Florida in late 2021. (Image Credit: Lockheed Martin)}*

A Senior Program Manager at Lockheed Martin David Rohall stated that “We took two commercially manufactured Humvees and connected them through Commercial 5G networks on site, we took these Humvees and tested them in different scenarios and different sites. This would be like your home computer on steroids, that is designed to work in all environments that our military needs to go in, and it is up-gradable.”

The research and development team at Lockheed Martin is currently testing the latency time of the device in the real-world environment. The latency time refers to the time delay that may occur during communication in the field. Military-grade communication devices are preferred to have low latency time in order to execute the commands without any delay. According to Lockheed Martin, the 5G communication device has an extremely low latency time which is almost 30 milliseconds.

Lockheed Martin also announced that they are working on partnering with wireless network services operator Verizon in order to develop a reliable and secure 5G communication network for United States Military.