If there is one thing the war in Ukraine is teaching us, it is that electronic communications and electronic warfare are becoming increasingly overlapped. For example, remotely controlled drones have been a striking new element of warfare from the early days of the defence of Kiev.
Just recently, a few announcements to the press have underlined quite how much change is under way and the impact this is having on the defence industry, which telecoms providers and carriers would do well to consider both in developing the next generation and in upgrades of the current one.
We Hope You Like Jamming Too
In the UK, the Ministry of Defence and QinetiQ have announced that they will build a new test facility in response to GPS jamming. With an increasing diversity of drones, connected vehicles and connected devices used in both military and civilian environments, GPS jamming is a method both to protect forces from opponents and to limit their capabilities. This is true of air traffic control for civilian flights and emergency services as much as for missiles, combat drones and F-16s.
Minister for Defence Procurement and Industry, Maria Eagle, said: “Hostile threats jamming GPS to disorientate military equipment have become increasingly common. This cutting-edge test facility will help us eliminate vulnerabilities from our platforms, protect our national security and keep our Armed Forces better protected on global deployments.”
Ready in 2026, the test facility will be built at the Ministry of Defence’s Boscombe Down site and be the size of an aircraft hangar. Appropriately enough, the intention is for it to contain jet fighters, Chinook helicopters and other large pieces of military equipment.
The aim is to test how resilient different pieces of equipment are at resisting these jamming attacks and other attempts to confuse or disrupt their radio-based location and communications capabilities. Inside this facility they will be able to simulate jamming attacks and other forms of hostile radio environments in a way which is isolated from the outside world – which is probably a relief to hear for local aviation.
Clearly resilience in the face of jamming is going to be significant for communications as well. One of the methods to reduce dependency on GPS is to have other ways to locate and synchronise, which may invite conversations on managing detailed timing. This is a fairly niche topic but is relevant in, for example, the coordination of TDD signals. Typically telecoms systems have relied on GPS. There are other companies out there proposing different solutions, however, and especially in countries with national security concerns this may be a way to build more resilient services.
USAI Capabilities
Meanwhile, US think-tank SCSP recently published a thought piece on the changing nature of warfare, highlighting “four battlegrounds – for leadership in AI, in cyber and information domains, and across the electromagnetic spectrum.”
It is certainly true that conflicts of the 21st century have seen some striking methods being used to augment boots on the ground, from the prevalence of satellite imagery to the social media propaganda ISIS used to recruit fighters from around the world. Cyber-warfare has been employed for a wide variety of situations in open or covert warfare – a good example is the Stuxnet virus, which this podcast episode covers in fascinating detail. Combining these with other forms of electronic and physical warfare, and coordinating them effectively, is a task similar to the first attempts at coordinating artillery, tanks, aircraft and infantry during World War One but with a much greater level of complexity, many more variables and, as a result, a faster pace of change.
The SCSP authors Paul Lyons and Dave Zikusoka note that “as AI permeates the battlespace, we can expect these trends to intensify and for the complexity of warfare to far outpace human cognition.”
The thought piece takes a very strong line on the need for the US to be out-competing and out-spending on military AI. It emphasises the need for a “resilient, AI-powered, all-domain command and control architecture that aggregates information, integrates domains, leverages algorithmically-generated analysis, amplifies human cognitive abilities in planning and decision-making, delivers priority target nominations, and orchestrates attacks.”
To people familiar with the current state of AI this might be a double-edged sword. As Eleanor Watson, President of the European Responsible AI Office, noted in this article, “The ugly truth of machine learning is that it’s pretty much throwing things at the wall and seeing what sticks. There’s very little theory behind these mechanisms. It’s simply somebody has observed that this does something interesting and they’ve written down the recipe. We are, in essence, closer to alchemy than chemistry.”
As a result of which, an over-reliance on AI might lead to the digital version of military corruption. Depending on the data it ingests, an AI might decide that reporting what the end-user wants to hear is the more important outcome than reporting fact. This could lead an AI to claim something is the case – and provide supporting evidence – while flying in the face of facts on the ground.
Telecoms and Defence – Allies or More?
Telecoms companies may be much more familiar with the SCSP’s comments about the spectrum “terrain,” which the authors describe as “congested, contested and constrained. Drones are lost by the thousands to electronic warfare (EW), U.S.-provided guided munitions veer off target, and command posts and logistic hubs that fail to control electromagnetic emissions are swiftly destroyed. The U.S. military depends heavily on consistent, reliable access to the electromagnetic spectrum (EMS) and in its ability to deny the enemy’s access to the same in combat.”
The telecoms community has dealt with the challenge of operating in noisy and constrained environments for years now, and there may well be technical lessons that can cross-pollinate from the defence and telecoms environments.
One unexpected area of ideas exchange, however, might be in terms of developing and managing international standards. In what might be one of the least expected turns, the SCSP authors observe that:
“AI adoption rates and sophistication among allies will likely vary. These challenges demand that the United States and its allies and partners be integrated in new and novel ways. Interoperability is no longer enough; integration and interchangeability are necessary to meet the complexities of future warfare. Therefore, compatibility across the AI stack will need to be ensured, preferably at the start, to enable future combined forces.”
In essence, the argument here seems to be that, if the USA has complex AI systems coordinating and controlling a battlefield, it should also do that for its allies rather than wait for them to pick up on recommendations or orders through a chain of command. This has two apparent ramifications, neither of them… optimal.
- For the US’ allies there must be a huge – likely unprecedented – amount of trust involved in taking military decisions out of the hands of their own staff.
- For the US, there must be an assumption that not only are their own systems a safe operating environment but so are their allies’. The attack surface for AI poisoning or other approaches becomes that much greater.
If this is a serious idea worth consideration, though – and 6GWorld is in no position to claim expertise about it – then it implies either creating or leveraging international standards to allow for the integration of different systems. This is certainly an area where the IT and telecoms domains can assist, both from the perspective of enabling open systems which can be tested through offering public bug bounties, and from the development of standards through international collaboration along 3GPP lines.
For the defence industry at least, it looks likely that the evolution towards a new generation of telecoms will increasingly overlap with the evolution of national security capabilities and the resilience of a country to both physical and digital attacks on its infrastructure and systems. Should we expect a re-alignment of interest and engagement across the boundaries of public and private sector, and what impacts might that have?
While we don’t have clear answers now, readers might want to join the US DoD in a meeting on the definitions and key next steps in creating resilience, September 23rd in Washington DC, taking place alongside 6GSymposium. For more details of that meeting and other events, activities and top-tier networking with government and industry, visit the 6GSymposium website.
