Pentagon officials call it "the lifeblood of
the battlefield," but they are not referring to
fuel, water, food, or any other traditional commodity.
Rather, they are talking about the electromagnetic
spectrum-the range of natural radiation used by radios,
radars, televisions, and the like to send signals over
vast distances at lightning speed.
Information systems undergird today's dominant American
military, and anything that threatens access to the
spectrum generates immediate and serious concern.
However, the electronic spectrum is a finite resource,
and it has become precious. The United States military,
as one of the world's most voracious consumers of the
spectrum, increasingly finds itself battling a formidable
foe-a spectrum-hungry commercial telecommunications
industry eager to expand its range of services and
increase profits.
In this war for the spectrum, the stakes are high.
The civilian economy has been pitted against the needs
of US national security, with the Defense Department
fighting on the political and regulatory front to assert
its rights to large swaths of the spectrum. Asserting
its own claim is a coalition of business interests
comprising major satellite, broadcasting, and cellular
telephone associations in Washington, D.C.
The commercial sector argues, with considerable success,
that its claim to spectrum access is as compelling
as that asserted by the armed forces. Its spokesmen
maintain that US firms need access to greater and greater
portions of the spectrum to foster telecommunications
growth and indirectly fuel the modern global economy.
A Crowded Arena
Spectrum issues are complex, involving federal auctions,
international regulators, and technical coordination
of hundreds of systems operated by users of every imaginable
sort. DoD has been forced to square off against social
and economic interests as diverse as the American Indian
lobby, emergency 911 services, and Africans who want
satellite-delivered radio programming.
Few are more familiar with the problem than Col. Richard
Skinner, a USAF officer serving in the office of Arthur
L. Money, the senior civilian official named to be
assistant secretary of defense for command, control,
communications, and intelligence. "DoD [realizes]
the importance of access to spectrum," said Skinner. "People
want wireless technology. They want multiple phones,
[and] wireless computers that operate at high speeds.
It is generating tremendous demand for spectrum."
To no one's surprise, Congress has become deeply involved
in the dispute, with some members lining up behind
the Pentagon and others taking the side of commercial
business interests.
Hear the words of one senior Congressional staffer
who is sympathetic to the DoD cause and involved in
spectrum issues on a daily basis: "It's essential
to protect military access to frequencies. ... The
current process has resulted in short-term fiscal considerations
taking priority over national security and led to the
long-term loss of taxpayer investment."
This person warns that, if industry aggressively expands
into spectrum bands that are to be shared with the
military, then commercial users eventually will complain
about interference from the military systems, and the
Pentagon will be ordered to stop operating those systems.
He pointed out that, in California, civilians forced
the Navy to stop using some radars close to the coast.
Reason? Aircraft radar signals had the unintended effect
of opening garage doors and messing up cordless telephones.
Residents complained.
DoD and commercial interests share the spectrum in
countless areas. Civilian cellular phones share bandwidth
with DoD radar and satellites. Commercial satellites
in virtually all bands, in current use and planned
for the future, share the spectrum with DoD satellites
and military radar. Satellite home television services
use the same band as the Pentagon's new Global Broadcast
System.
The Defense Department has "nearly 900,000 spectrum
dependent systems," according to a DoD report
to Congress setting out the military's spectrum requirements.
Although many of the details of DoD spectrum usage
are classified, systems generally include communications,
radar, electronic combat, and navigation. Additionally,
spectrum access is needed for training, testing, security,
and fire control at military installations.
A single military fighter aircraft will carry many
systems dependent on the spectrum. The list could include:
- Radar altimeter
- Joint Tactical Information Distribution System
- Global Positioning System
- Instrument landing system
- Fire-control radar
- Electronic warfare systems for jamming or detection
of enemy radars
The range of the spectrum required for one platform
is broad. The more systems carried, the more intense
the need for the spectrum. As DoD platforms have become
more complex to support the need for more mobility
and precision in operations, the chance for radio interference
with systems has gone up, further complicating the
problem of sharing or agreeing to reallocation of the
spectrum to commercial users.
Keeping a Distance
As DoD's report to Congress stated, "Our forces
must have enough spectrum to allow multiple systems
on multiple platforms to operate on frequencies far
enough away from each other to prevent mutual interference."
More advanced military systems have even higher spectrum
requirements. Designing new systems with technological
advances to use the spectrum more efficiently, and
thereby reduce the need for the spectrum, or to share
the spectrum, raises design costs, causing another
problem for DoD planners.
DoD's dependence on the spectrum became clear during
the Gulf War in 1991 and in operations in Bosnia in
1995.
"The massive military machine that won the Gulf
War could not have functioned without unfettered access
to the RF [Radio Frequency] spectrum," noted DoD's
report to Congress. "Gulf War operations used
nearly every major military RF system in the US arsenal." The
report implied that the US moved right away to destroy
Iraqi systems that might impede or compete with US
use of the spectrum.
Operations like the rescue of downed USAF pilot Capt.
Scott F. O'Grady in Bosnia, and subsequent sustained
military airstrikes against Bosnian Serb positions,
resulted in a sharp upswing in the intensity of US
spectrum usage. "The success of [the O'Grady]
rescue mission might very well have been [thwarted]
without ready access to the spectrum required," said
the Pentagon report. "Future rescue missions will
require similar resources."
More recently, effective spectrum management turned
out to be a major challenge in NATO's military operation
in the Balkans. In the view of Skinner, the problem
was the sheer number of systems expected to work together. "There
are all sorts of opportunities for interference that
is unintentional," he explained, noting that there
could be conflicts between two military systems or
between a military and a commercial system. Interference
occurred during the Kosovo operation, but it was resolved
without any serious damage, according to Skinner.
The Pentagon's attempts to assert dominance on spectrum
matters coincide with a boom in the wireless telecommunications
industry. Cellular telephones, satellites, and terrestrial
wireless services for broadband, Internet, and other
uses all are growing at astounding rates. These powerful
commercial interests also require new spectrum access
to expand, with future growth having a direct impact
on the US economy.
What DoD Won't Say
Industry officials complain that the Pentagon refuses
to spell out what it needs in terms of future spectrum
assignments. "DoD either won't tell people, or
they don't know what they need the spectrum for," said
an experienced consultant to several major satellite
firms. "It's problematic for commercial operators
to not interfere with them on shared bands."
GPS and its spectrum assignments are frequently at
the center of controversy. In 1997, a block of European
countries led by Britain made an attempt to change
GPS spectrum allocations, with London proposing to
international regulators that some spectrum used by
GPS be turned over to commercial use. The move caught
Washington off guard, and ultimately Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright had to personally intervene to convince
the Europeans to back off, according to industry sources.
DoD first became seriously concerned about commercial
encroachment on its spectrum in 1993. In that year,
Congress decided to auction off spectrum access to
commercial users to bring billions of dollars into
government coffers. Much of the spectrum made available
for auction to the private sector had formerly been
allocated to DoD, and the military was forced to move
out of some bandwidths.
Doing so has a high cost, said Money. Precisely how
much, he could not say. In 1993, it cost the Pentagon
between $247 million and $1.2 billion to carry out
the spectrum reallocation in the 235 megaHertz area.
In another case, a 1997 Congressional reallocation
smacked the Pentagon with $436 million to $2.5 billion
in unanticipated costs.
Money said DoD and US taxpayers should not have to
bear those costs. "There is an essential need
to balance the national security needs of the nation
with commercial interests when considering spectrum
reallocation," Money contended to Congress. "A
national blueprint for future spectrum reallocations
could mitigate impacts to the department. For example,
if reimbursements of displacement costs were mandated,
commercial entities gaining spectrum access would incur
the reallocation costs instead of the department and
the American taxpayers."
In testimony to the Senate Armed Services Committee,
Money pointed out that spectrum access is essential
to gaining the kind of information superiority that
wins wars. "Furthermore, there are future threats.
Physical threats to the United States are probably
going to be more and more low observable. ... As the
low observable ability of [an] object gets lower and
lower, you need more bandwidth to, in fact, detect
it."
Money conceded that new modulation techniques and
other technology advances would allow more sharing
of the spectrum, but he said that "the department
desperately needs [the spectrum allocated to it]," or
DoD will incur higher costs and degradation of weapon
system performance.
Warner's Gambit
The issue of sharing, and who would have priority,
came to center stage this spring. Sen. John Warner
(R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee,
proposed a measure to give DoD priority access to frequency
bands in the United States. If approved, the bill would
have changed the way the spectrum has been allocated
in the US for decades. Today, spectrum allocation is
handled by the Federal Communications Commission and
the National Telecommunications and Information Administration,
with 93 percent of the spectrum between 30 mHz and
300 gigaHertz shared by federal and nonfederal users.
A chorus of loud protests ensued, with opponents charging
that Warner's provision would give DoD a superprimary
status in all shared bands where they operate. The
commercial companies would have been denied access
to some frequencies. For others, the uncertainties
about sharing would have discouraged commercial usage.
DoD was portrayed as using heavy-handed tactics against
the telecommunications industry.
In August, a Congressional conference committee changed
the provisions to try to get more cooperation among
defense and nondefense spectrum users and eliminated
provisions like the one that would have forced commercial
firms to pay for interference with military systems.
Spectrum sharing and reallocation promises to remain
a controversial issue.
"In a lot of bands, DoD is a secondary user," said
Clayton Mowry, executive director of the Satellite
Industry Association, part of a coalition of seven
commercial associations that protested the move to
give DoD favored status. "We think it is critical
for any new law to encourage sharing. Legislation that
takes away any incentive for DoD to share spectrum
or work out interference problems will hurt the development
of new commercial satellite systems. Ultimately, we
think the Pentagon will become a major user of those
commercial satellite systems."
In the meantime, conflict between military and commercial
spectrum users continues to grow. In June, FCC Chairman
William E. Kennard wrote to members of Congress opposing
the Warner provision that would give DoD more spectrum
power. The White House also sent letters establishing
the official Administration position as maintaining
the status quo in how allocation is managed; it would
not give DoD an elevated status.
In the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, Congress called
for slicing out and making available at auction another
15 mHz of the federal government's spectrum. DoD has
been asked to give much of the blood in this effort.
(A more recent version calls for 12 mHz to be reallocated.)
Actual interference cases also are on the rise.
Overlapping Signals
A dispute has run for many months between WorldSpace,
a commercial satellite operator, and the Defense Department.
WorldSpace wants to use a three-satellite constellation
to broadcast radio programming to billions of people
living in poor, remote parts of Africa, Asia, and the
Americas. The frequencies chosen by WorldSpace for
its broadcasts are essentially identical to those that
the Defense Department uses for range telemetry.
WorldSpace has raised more than $1 billion to pay
for its fleet of three satellites. One of them, called
AmeriStar, would hover in a fixed position above the
Western hemisphere and cover the Americas. Some of
its beams would cover the US, posing what DoD has deemed
as a serious risk to telemetry collection.
WorldSpace operates in the L-band, in frequencies
1467 through 1492 mHz. According to the Pentagon, 86
important flight test centers use the same frequencies
to collect data on military and civil aircraft, missiles,
and Unmanned Aerial Vehicles. Some 50 programs, including
the B-2 bomber, C-17 airlifter, F-22 fighter, Joint
Strike Fighter, and Global Hawk UAV would be affected.
"Billions of dollars in delays are likely as
programs reconfigure and reschedule telemetry use," charges
a Pentagon assessment of the problem.
DoD has broken off negotiations with WorldSpace after
failing to reach an agreement to "deconflict" the
spectrum usage, and WorldSpace's AmeriStar satellite
has been placed in storage until a technical solution
can be reached that will not interfere with the military
operations.
Kennard, the FCC chairman, and the Defense Department
also clashed over spectrum access that Kennard wanted
to use to bring better telecommunications service to
Indian reservations in the American southwest. In pursuit
of that goal, Kennard wanted to use a fixed wireless
spectrum band, 3400-3700 mHz, but it is already used
by the Air Force's E-3 Airborne Warning and Control
System aircraft radar and various Navy radars.
Kennard wanted DoD to share the spectrum. Skinner,
the Pentagon official, said DoD agreed to an experimental
license to demonstrate a system to a limited number
of terminals. However, Nortel, a big telecom firm,
has asked for frequency allocation to serve far more
than the initial 200 terminals. The service no longer
looks temporary or experimental to the Pentagon, and
DoD, according to Skinner, "has to go back, analyze
this, make a judgment, and decide based on technology
and policy whether the license ought to be granted."
The concern is simple enough. "Eventually," said
Skinner, "you get pushed out of the bandwidth.
Every time AWACS flies and someone's telephone doesn't
work, it will generate a lot of complaints, even though
we are primary users [of that particular frequency]."
A new emergency service called E911, which lets the
rescue personnel know where a caller is, would incorporate
Mobile Satellite System and GPS satellite receivers
into the same equipment. Skinner said as long as the
low-powered GPS signals aren't overpowered by noise
from the nearby MSS bands, this initiative would be
great. Commercial global mobile telephone handsets
from Iridium and Globalstar will operate at a frequency
just above GPS, which did bring up military concerns
of interference, but they seem manageable.
