Military Officials Worry Policymakers Don’t Understand Their Spectrum Needs
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- The U.S. military hasn’t gotten across adequately to policymakers involved in shuffling spectrum how it’s used for national and homeland security and why the uses are crucial, a Pentagon official said Monday. “Some important people don’t understand” these matters, said Steve Molina, director of strategic planning in the Defense Information Systems Administration’s Defense Spectrum Organization. “We need to do a better job of educating folks."
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"People involved in making decisions about moving spectrum around” may have access to a number showing that use of a band is very low but not that it’s extremely important, such as for moving the positions of missiles, Molina said on a panel at the Military Communications Conference. In response, his agency is developing “an enduring capacity to quantify our spectrum needs,” but “it’s not going to be ready for prime time” in planning for national spectrum needs for the next 10 years.
Policymakers often assume that spectrum for communications in military operations isn’t needed within the U.S., when it often is, speakers said. That was the case with an unspecified member of Congress told about video capabilities on missiles for targeting, said Col. Brian Jordan, commander of the Air Force Spectrum Management Office. He said he had to explain that it was essential for purposes such as training.
Commercial and military uses of spectrum are so different that “they're not apples to apples comparisons,” Jordan said. “Mission effectiveness” is even more important than spectrum efficiency to the armed forces, and they must deploy communications “when and where needed,” often on little notice, he said.
Sometimes federal spectrum uses are different from commercial ones and sometimes they aren’t, said Walter Johnson, chief of the FCC’s Electromagnetic Compatibility Division. Federal users need to start making a “continual investment” in spectrum efficiency, he said.
The FCC is looking at yardsticks for efficiency more up-to-date than bits per hertz, Johnson said. It may settle on bits per hertz per square mile per unit of time, he said. The FCC is also looking to infrastructure-sharing in addition to spectrum-sharing planned in bands such as the TV white spaces, Johnson said. Officials think they can extend bandwidth-reservation techniques being tried in white spaces, he said.
Jordan supported long-term planning to replace the “what’s next? model” that he said has prevailed in spectrum policy. “We need to be looking 10, 20, 30 years down the road in many of these bands.” Long lead times are needed for everything from ITU approvals to aircraft procurement, he said.
Technology for dynamic spectrum use “doesn’t look like it will get us where we need to go” in meeting demand for capacity, said Thomas Kidd, the Navy Department director of strategic spectrum policy, meaning incumbent users will have “to constrain their operations” or move to new spectrum in some cases. Military users aren’t resistant to sharing or moving in principle, but to the “burden that’s placed on us” to accomplish that, he said.
"Noncognitive sharing,” in which the military would have to seek permission for use from another spectrum user, “is the most problematic” set-up, Kidd said. He said he knew in kindergarten that it wasn’t fair when the teacher made one child give something up to another and called it sharing. “Ubiquitous sharing,” in which “I never know you're there” making use of the same spectrum as the military -- “I like that,” Kidd said. The intermediate kind, “cognitive sharing is a little bit harder."
Molina of the Defense Spectrum Organization conceded that DoD must manage spectrum better than it has. The military has been “stuck in a regime” in which systems are installed on “chunks of spectrum allocation to different services” and “there it stays,” he said. It must take a much less “static,” “command and control” approach, Molina said.
The agile, opportunistic spectrum access needed requires new automation tools and, Molina stressed, considerably better information than the military has had. The data must be more complete, current and accurate than they have been, and they should be interoperable domestically and internationally, he said.
Roughly 14 bands that the Navy uses are under consideration for reallocation, and the service has identified as many as 30 tasks required in grappling with sharing or moving, such as environmental impact studies for both possibilities, Kidd said. All cost scarce money, and the expenses add up, he said: “We're not talking decimal dust. … We're hitting significant numbers here.” And that raises the prospect of poor information about important matters, Kidd said. “I start to become concerned about the quality you will get” and “what that’s going to mean five to 10 years down the road. … That’s a boring, not very sexy side of the problem.”