Under the contract, Hughes will install 5G O-RAN equipment at the base that will operate a temporary network for preliminary evaluation, according to a press release. The network will eventually transition to the company’s commercial network in order to support both Pentagon and commercial customers in and around the military installation.

The project will be a joint effort between the Army, the Pentagon’s Chief Information Officer (CIO) and the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, the release noted.

“The Open RAN project at Fort Bliss is a valuable opportunity for the DoD to explore the enhanced command and control capabilities that near-real time control of the RAN offers DoD,” Anthony Smith, acting DOD CIO for command, control and communications, said in a statement. “The DoD CIO will continue to prioritize the deployment of Open RAN architectures and 5G across the Department, leveraging these information communications technologies for strategic warfighter advantage.”

Advancing 5G communications capabilities for military applications has been a key priority for the Pentagon’s FutureG office in recent years, specifically via O-RAN technology. While current radio access networks use standalone hardware and software platforms, O-RAN is a multi-vendor solution that separates the software and hardware and allows for different vendors to simultaneously operate on the same network.

The capability would offer “increased functionality and scalability of 5G wireless networks, incorporation of artificial intelligence/machine learning (AI/ML) into DoD systems, and greater flexibility in acquiring or replacing the software and hardware used in military equipment,” a department press release stated.

The project at Fort Bliss will serve as the testing ground for development of a RAN Intelligent Controller (RIC) — a software component that optimizes the radio access network. The effort is expected to lay foundations for O-RAN installation at other military locations, while also establishing a training site for staff.

“The primary use case that the Fort Bliss prototype will test through the RIC is the ability to rapidly change spectrum at the 5G control node, a capability that has real world relevance to resilient communications for a mobile command post,” per the release.

The new prototype effort follows a number of O-RAN technology pilots kickstarted by the Pentagon’s FutureG office in 2023, which allowed the department to work with companies and understand how open networks and software approaches can improve communication capabilities for warfighters.

Hughes has previously worked with the Defense Department in advancing wireless technology for service members. The company received a contract in 2022 to deploy a standalone 5G network at the Naval Air Station Whidbey Island in Washington, which established the first 5G O-RAN network at a U.S. military base, according to Hughes. In 2024, Hughes received a follow-on extension contract to continue 5G deployment at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam in Hawaii.

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In recent years, the Pentagon has awarded contracts and rolled out test beds for 5G and other next-generation capabilities. CIO John Sherman has said he’s particularly interested in scaling these efforts to include O-RAN technology pilots at additional installations.

O-RAN enables open interfaces, interoperable components and multi-vendor solutions for wireless networks. Tom Rondeau, principal director for FutureG and 5G in the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering, is an advocate of this approach.

“Just want to kind of come out and say that we are … in DOD, all-in on O-RAN or open RAN,” he said this week at an event hosted by the Atlantic Council.

The military services are experimenting with the technology, he noted.

“The Marine Corps this week is kind of finishing up one of their latest spirals of the OSIRIS platform that Lockheed Martin is the prime on, out in Camp Pendleton. So we’ll be getting a lot of good data on an actual open RAN architecture that is designed for Marine Corps expeditionary advanced base operations uses. So I’m really looking forward to getting the feedback on that one … That’s part of the partnership that we’ve created to advance the open RAN concept,” he said.

In August, Lockheed Martin announced that it had delivered a prototype 5G testbed variant for an OSIRIS, or Open Systems Interoperable and Reconfigurable Infrastructure Solution, capability to the Marines at Camp Pendleton, California, to begin mobile network experimentation.

The prototype integrates an open radio unit with Lockheed’s hybrid base station running Intel’s FlexRAN reference software and hardware, according to the company.

“This integration makes the OSIRIS system one of the first tactical 5G standalone small cell systems compliant with the Open-Radio Access Network (O-RAN) 7.2 split architecture,” the contractor said in a release. “O-RAN 7.2 split architecture compliance optimizes the OSIRIS system to oversee increases in bandwidth while also maximizing virtualization of shared resources like radios.”

Whitney McNamara, a nonresident senior fellow in the Forward Defense program of the Atlantic Council’s Scowcroft Center for Strategy and Security, said there are some things the U.S. can do to get a leg up in its communications technology competition with China.

“I think one is just making sure that we are incentivizing all of industry to have this open RAN approach … that allows vendors to be interoperable and that allows us to innovate on sort of the 5G tech stack. I think that allows us to harness all the great commercial innovation that we see in industry. And two, it’s an advantage against [Chinese telecom giant] Huawei that’s very much vertically integrated, so when they want to innovate, they have to replace the whole system,” she said.

McNamara has a Pentagon background, having previously served as director of science and technology for the DOD’s Defense Innovation Board and as an emerging tech subject matter expert in the CIO’s office.

Industry is facing challenges, she noted.

“Currently, we have some bottlenecks, I would argue, in O-RAN adoption in the U.S., especially among smaller firms,” she said. “I think making sure that the O-RAN infrastructure and tests and evaluation facilities to make sure that they can get certified, that they are interoperable with O-RAN, that they are secure is really, really critical.”

Open RAN architectures can help promote industry competition, according to Dan Rice, vice president of 5G.MIL programs at Lockheed Martin.

“I think the advantage of those open RAN standards … are that smaller businesses can compete on just a portion of that stack. You don’t have to try to have all the capital and the investment necessary to deliver an end-to-end solution. You can choose what part of that ecosystem you want to compete in. And with the interoperability and the ability to test that against standards … you’re able to then show how that can be delivered into any O-RAN infrastructure,” he said.

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For the last few years, the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering has been working to adopt 5G and future-generation wireless network technologies across the department. On Oct. 1, the CIO’s organization will take the lead on those efforts and expand the scope of current 5G testing and experimentation, Sherman announced at the DefenseTalks conference hosted by DefenseScoop..

“We’ve already been working left-seat and right-seat with research and engineering on this,” he said. “But we’ve got the lead as of Oct. 1 on the 5G pilots that are underway at the numerous DOD installations.”

In 2020, the Pentagon awarded contracts to multiple prime contractors to set up 5G and “FutureG” test bed projects at different military bases across the country. Each site experiments with a different way the department can utilize the technology, including creating smart warehouses enabled by 5G and bi-directional spectrum sharing.

As Sherman’s office takes over these initiatives, he’s particularly interested in scaling these efforts to include open radio access network (O-RAN) technology pilots at additional installations, he said.

“We’re working with a number of U.S. companies potentially on this, looking at multi-service installations as we move away from a closed network, black-box sort of thing … to more of an open network, open software approach that our U.S. industry can work and dominate on,” Sherman said.

O-RAN technology is a version of the radio access network system, which is the component connecting individual devices to a wireless network. While current RAN technology uses an integrated hardware and software platform, O-RAN is a multi-vendor solution that separates the software and hardware and enables open interfaces and virtualization.

The Defense Department has some foundations in exploring O-RAN technology for its military modernization efforts. In February, the Pentagon sponsored a technology challenge aimed at validating the tech and helping establish the deployment readiness of O-RAN systems. 

Traditional radio access networks are “a critical component to get information from your phone or your device into the rest of the network — it’s the middle part between those two systems,” Tom Rondeau, principal director for FutureG and 5G at the Pentagon, said during a panel at DefenseTalks. “These are black boxes, they’re walled off, they’re very tightly controlled systems that are very expensive.”

But adopting O-RAN technology could be key for the Pentagon’s 5G and FutureG efforts, as it would allow the department to “break open that black box into different components,” he said. 

Not only would the Pentagon’s focus on O-RAN bring new competition to the market and incentivize new innovation, the open architecture approach would also allow the department to experiment with new features in wireless communications, such as zero-trust security features, he noted.

“It’s going to change the game,” Rondeau said.

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