Conflict in the air: who gets to rule the waves?

Administrative Incentive Pricing and other market measures will soon determine how much spectrum both civil and military sectors control in many countries. How can the spectrum best be managed to meet both civil and defence needs and ensure the military can fight where and when it needs to? ATDI managing director John Berry examines the problems and potential solutions.

We know that the spectrum requested from a host nation or from a coalition led nation by any military force will be significantly more than that actually made available. Demand always exceeds supply.

This supports the economist's view that spectrum should be allocated using a value metric: he who pays makes the best use of this scarce resource. In countries introducing market measures, the military will pay for spectrum like everyone else. The result will be that civil wireless telecomms will occupy the spectrum leaving little for that country's defence forces or for an international force coming to that country's aid.

So how might we expect this situation to change over the next ten years? Might we get to a situation when the UN, the EU and NATO find it impossible to fight at division or even brigade strength? Might lack of spectrum thwart noble efforts?

We have become used to military conflict in sparsely populated, under developed and failed nation-states. But will this always be so?

High level operational contexts suggest that in the future we'll see smaller, higher tempo operations anywhere in the world. Broadly, there are three types of nation-state across the globe: developed, developing and under-developed.

Developed countries have a highly developed spectrum governance. Their defence forces are handing back spectrum to the civil authorities to be auctioned to fuel domestic growth. The developing countries are following and in some ways the demand on the spectrum is considerably greater. There is no expanse of copper and fibre in the ground. Because it is easy to deploy, wireless is used for everything. The stress on the spectrum is huge and getting bigger as these countries race to achieve what we all term 'progress'. The under-developed countries have spectrum confusion but generally the stress on the spectrum is low and hence it is available for military operations.

We've established so far that the civil world is increasing its use of the spectrum to fuel GDP growth. This constrains any spectrum that might be left for a peace keeping, peace making or fighting force.

Information is key to military success. As a result, forces strive for 'network enabled capability'. This will demand more data bandwidth and more links between force elements. The result will be a huge increase in required spectrum bandwidth. In parallel, commanders will make greater use of sensors and other devices that give situational awareness. Although not required for command and control, such devices still use the spectrum.

Then there's the 'bad guys'. Whoever we will be fighting against, metaphorically or actually, will use the spectrum too and we will make use of force protection measures to deny it to them. Those devices also take their toll on the total available. Finally, 'normality' must prevail within the civil population and mobile phones and broadcasters must keep going. Any coalition force must therefore negotiate its spectrum with every other user - blue, red or neutral.

And the problem extends across regions; Kosovo is still a volatile place as its ethnic Albanian population fights for independence with its parent, Serbia. How much spectrum might a future EU peace-keeping operation be given if civil war were once again to erupt? The province of Kosovo is ringed by developing countries. On average their GDP growth is 5.5%. Industry growth is 25%. Civil spectrum use will therefore be up too. And radiowaves don't stop at the borders. It's just 75km from Pristina to Skopje making cross-border co-channel sharers into co-channel interferers.

In summary, then, we can't always expect to fight in deserts. We have a limited spectrum to start with, split between coalition partners. Spectrum usage is growing in all countries including neighbouring territories. Its use in the military world will grow manifold as new technologies are introduced. It all places a significant stress upon, and maybe a fundamental limitation to, operations.

And the solution? Future inventions may solve this problem, but for the next ten years two principles apply: the coalition spectrum manager must be aware of all users near and far and effectively negotiate spectrum use on behalf of his commander. He must provide adequate protection to users in an interference-limited world. He needs the tools, the specialist training and the authority to act in what will become in the future a highly stressed but highly valued role.

This article is a synopsis of a keynote presentation by John Berry at a conference of defence communications and spectrum users and decision makers.