[austincheney]

This is highly unusual from a technology perspective. Cellular communications are distinctly and deliberately not part of DOD missions outside the US because those transmissions are easily intercepted and not encrypted. Any use of international cell phones by DOD personnel is purely a matter of urgency and convenience severely limited in what they can be used for.

[DyslexicAtheist]

5G benefits IIoT and edge processing, and there is little that suggests that 5G is more secure than 4G. It still has the same flaws but only the data rate is so huge that only a well funded and sophisticated lab has the ability to conduct research, but reduces access to doing research for most.

5G has even bigger implications on defense outside the small niche (of MIL spec) smart-phones. The risks are massive for a military to rely on such a consumer-grade tech. But never mind bug/back-doors Trusting foreign (multinational) vendors with this (no matter how friendly) will never work because the trust assumption beneath is already flawed.

Edit: Looking at it from a EU perspective: https://berthub.eu/articles/posts/5g-elephant-in-the-room/

"> Just to let that sink in, Huawei (and their close partners) already run and directly operate the mobile telecommunication infrastructure for over 100 million European subscribers."

[Foivos]

Network slicing and Edge computing can change that.

It is possible to have all military traffic either terminate at the edge of the military (for example a 5G installation at an army camp) or use a dedicated slice (fully isolated from the normal user traffic) to reach a trusted cloud. Usually, they use both at the same time, so if the connection to the trusted cloud is lost, you rely on the edge cloud.

As far as I know, NATO has several such projects.

[philprx]

Part true, but to be precise:

Public, notably 4G infrastructures, have been used as underlying networks for day to day military and security activity. The overlay network itself is still encrypted and resilient by using other networks if public network is not available.

With 5G, it even accelerates. Therefore it justifies part of the ban of Huawei and the security needed for 5G networks.

So this program does not look so astonishing.

[austincheney]

I am an Army signal officer with 5 deployments. The military considers cell phones inherently insecure and not a mission asset, regardless of what you may read.

[Jtsummers]

The DoD, or at least the USAF, has decided that 5G is going to be a critical part of their infrastructure.

https://potomacofficersclub.com/will-roper-announces-larger-...

[hatmatrix]

Don't a lot of other devices use the 4G network for data tranfer (with encryption)?

[TeMPOraL]

Is that because military-purpose communications is insecure over 4G, or because modern smartphones, full of adtech malware, make it all to easy to leak your location by accident?

[Jtsummers]

It's a variety of factors. Information leaking is one, but a big one is the lack of control. DoD does not control any significant part of the present cellular network, so it might be useful but it oughtn't be part of your critical systems.