Bringing Overmatch to Battlefield Communications

“Combat overmatch, simply put, is the concept where my (insert lethality system here) can willfully and without prejudice or luck defeat your (insert your protective system here). Combat overmatch has been the goal in military forces since the first armed forces organized and entered in combat.”

This was written in 2018 by Matthew A. Horning, a systems engineer and the assistant chief of staff, G5, Plans, assigned to U.S. Army Futures Command, Next Generation Combat Vehicle Cross Functional Team.

In his article, Horning noted that the traditional concept of overmatch, based on weapons systems of increasing lethality, sophistication—and cost—is losing its effectiveness. He argued that going forward, it would be information overmatch that dominates the battlespace.

“Communications dominance is the way to get overmatch back,” said Dave Peterson, vice president of tactical wireless for Nokia Federal Solutions. “It speeds up our OODA [observe, orient, decide, act] loop so we can react and shoot first.”

Advancing to Tomorrow’s Battlespace

In today’s military doctrine, there are five key domains of warfare. Land, sea and air are well recognized and kinetic in nature; two—space and cyberspace—are products of technological Innovation over the past 80 years or so. The Soviet launch of Sputnik in 1957 marked the beginning of the space race, while the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff declared cyberspace a domain of conflict in the 2004 National Military Strategy.

The thread that connects all five is communications.

The Russia-Ukraine war has led to numerous technological advances, especially in the tactics of drone use. For instance, Ukrainian drone boats have successfully targeted Russian ships and coastal installations over the past three years. But they are not autonomous; they require human operators to guide them and their munitions to targets. That requires real-time video capabilities, a large part of today’s communications networks.

The modern battlespace has hundreds, perhaps thousands, of such interactions. Today’s troops, weapons systems, aerial systems (e.g., fighter jets, bombers and UAVs), and satellites, to name just a few, all have to work together in a dynamic environment and respond, individually and collectively, to opponents’ actions and weaponry. And just as the wider world is now digital, so, too, are all the facets of modern warfighting.

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has a strategic vision for the battlespace—Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2)—a concept that connects the data sensors, shooters and related communications devices of all U.S. military services. To achieve that vision, a new approach to communications is needed.

“Part of DoD’s modernization process is about throughput and scale,” said Steve Vogelsang, chief technology officer (CTO) for Nokia Federal Solutions. “All the military service branches should be able to send data to each individual in the battlespace, every weapons system, and receive data in return from all sources.”

The goal, after all, is to provide commanders, both those on the battlefield and the higher echelons monitoring the big picture, the highest-quality real-time information to make decisions, while empowering those “in the mud” to take decisive action.

“Concepts like JADC2 can only be accomplished with the addition of wideband technologies, and today that’s cellular,” said Peterson. “The waveforms the military has today can’t scale. If you have communications dominance, you have intelligence dominance. If you’re evenly matched in every other way but enjoy data intelligence dominance, you’ve got the only advantage you need in an otherwise fair fight. The trump card.”

A real-world demonstration of cellular’s capabilities to knit together all the elements of modern warfare was demonstrated at Northern Strike in August 2024, held at the National All-Domain Warfighting Center (NADWC) in northern Michigan. Northern Strike is a twice-yearly exercise with participants from the Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, National Guard and units from international partners. The exercise replicates all-domain operations, with emphasis on requirements emerging from DoD modernization.

For the exercise, the Fenix Group—now part of Nokia Federal Solutions—provided a Banshee mobile radio (BMR), a cellular edge network device capable of supporting up to 800 endpoints around a 15-kilometer diameter. The BMR creates a private network that can connect everything from satellite communications to ISR unmanned aerial systems, robots, unattended ground sensors and unmanned ground vehicles, disparate radios used by the U.S. and allied forces, Android tactical awareness kit (ATAK) end user devices, other IP networks and dedicated applications. The network was able to stream ISR video from A-10’s, F-16’s and MQ-9 drones—like Netflix, directly to end user devices.

For troops on the ground, it was like using a specialized, dedicated Android cellphone capable of sending and receiving real-time intelligence, including data and video as well as voice. During Northern Strike the company provided ATAK relays to the joint terminal attack controllers on the ground. Using cellular systems, they were able to relay the images to a training center located elsewhere in the NADWC.

Peterson said the company took a piece of legacy hardware, a transceiver for an A-10 aircraft, plugged it into a private cellular network with embedded MANET & TAK server, and see what the A-10 sees. “We plugged into a private tactical wireless network, and up to 800 people could watch,” he said. “Many more could join in, unlike a Wi-Fi network, and the cellular range is much better than Wi-Fi.”

With this approach, no one without credentials can watch the display. “Within a private cellular system there are a lot of controls to make sure things are segregated,” he explained. “So you can have a warfighter gathering intel, it may be that intel is out at the edge, and it can be seen [in real time.] So now the commander can see what the warfighter sees and [make] more effective decisions.” The difference between private cellular and public cellular from a security standpoint is drastic.

Peterson said the BMR is “built on Nokia guts—that’s why we joined forces. … Take an existing technology, something built for a shopping mall, build 13 different [printed circuit boards] so it could run on military batteries, add MANET and edge compute for mission critical services, ruggedize it to withstand environmental conditions, and add the antennas that make something milspec. We took existing technology and beefed it up, added things like edge-compute capability, and additional radios for backhaul.”

“Fenix made Nokia technology tactically relevant,” Vogelsang added. “Public cellular networks are designed to connect people with a service plan and ensure there is a way to bill you. That means you can be identified. On the battlefield Banshee creates a private cellular network where you securely control who can connect without exposing identities—it’s only the good guys.” During Northern Strike that included international and interagency partners who were also using the technology.

Getting to Adoption of Battlespace Cellular

Whenever the Pentagon looks at incorporating a new technology, there are obstacles. In this case, one is the military concern over sunk costs—how much has been spent over the years on all the hardware, software, weapons systems, communications networks, etc. Legacy investments cast a long shadow.

“We aren’t saying their sunk cost is worthless, we are saying you need to add another layer of communications that can connect everything,” Vogelsang said. “If I want to connect every troop, every device, every weapon, and have a modernized open architecture, that’s cellular communications.”

A second roadblock is, of course, the contractors currently providing radios. “If you’re a vendor and you’re supplying that stuff, you’ve got a program, and you’re just cranking away, selling a bunch of [units], then somebody comes along and says, ‘Hey there’s this new technology coming from industry where the R&D is already paid for and it’s much more cost-effective,’ you’re going to resist it,” he noted.

“There’s resistance from industry that’s already got market share. They look at it as a zero-sum game—but they’re getting over it,” Peterson added. “The military is more and more focused on technology; they have to establish training, and operations and maintenance [procedures]. Their goal is to be as independent from vendors as possible.”

Conclusion

Understanding how to deploy cellular private networks in a military environment takes a significant commitment, not a huge investment but one focused on the specifics of military requirements.

In return, however, this can deliver a technology overmatch that’s ready today. It’s developed, it’s tested, and it’s ready for field use, as the Northern Strike exercise demonstrated.

“I think people underestimate how important it is to be able to outclass your enemy with the speed of decision-making. And how simple it can be,” Peterson said. “I see the government spending billions on researching 5G—yet the same people researching it are using it every day at home. It’s ready to be out of the lab and into the mud with the troops. We don’t need to analyze it to death.”

For more information, please visit nokiafederal.com