As Marines fought across training ranges during a recent desert exercise, unit commanders and exercise controllers tracked their movements and actions – all in real-time.
That was the plan in using an ad hoc 5G mobile network set up in true Marine Corps fashion, with a pair of discounted trucks repurposed from the Army and retrofitted with 5G cellular towers.
Each Fifth Generation Cell-n Light Truck, or COLT, provided a 5G bubble that collected, received and relayed data into the wider enterprise network as the Marines maneuvered through the scrubby, hilly terrain at the Marine Corps Air Ground Combat Center at Twentynine Palms, Calif., during Service Level Training Exercise 5-24 that ran July 13 to Sept. 11. All that digital information fed into a common operating picture, expanding situational awareness for the exercise controllers and unit commanders of what was happening, as it was happening, officials said.
It marked the first time the Marine Corps created a mobile 5G network in an experiment. Exercise and training officials with the service’s Training and Education Command see advancing technologies, including 5G networks, as critical to support home-station training, predeployment exercises and operational demands in the all-domain environment.
“The idea was how we expand our coverage and exchange data into the range area and back out… and how we bring all that together in a coherent manner,” said Lt. Col. Jesse Attig, the modeling and simulation officer for MAGTF Training Command at Twentynine Palms. Once that backbone is in place, “then we can layer the different systems and training capabilities onto that to get to that all-domain range capability. But we were really pushing for this to be dedicated to training.”
The sprawling, remote base at Twentynine Palms, the service’s premier desert warfare training center, serves as something of a 5G test bed.
“It’s ultimately the first place where the rubber has met the road on our delivery of a wireless network for ranges and training areas,” said Maj. Ed Hickey, a modeling and simulation officer with the Quantico, Va.-based TECOM, said during a recent media call. Hickey also is a technical officer working on Project Tripoli, the Marine Corps’ initiative for all-echelon, all-domain live, virtual and constructive training environment that relies heavily on modernized networks as its backbone.
TECOM’s work on modernizing network and LVC capabilities continues to evolve through a series of exercises and experimentation that began in 2022.
“Each one was sort of a building block. Now that we have a really good baseline as we go into the planning for future events (at) home station and service level,” Attig said.
Leading up to the recent exercise, training and exercise officials worked through technological and cultural hurdles and risk concerns prompted by incorporating new tech.
Marine Corps officials say 5G cellular capability is needed to provide Marines with more realistic and relevant combat and weapons training and stay ahead of advancing technologies and peer adversaries, including China. Service officials want to deploy 5G to support training across the force, to include forward-deployed units and the Stand-in Force in the Indo-Pacific. TECOM is working to develop requirements and enterprise-level solutions for 5G networks and also technical requirements so 5G can support existing systems and emerging capabilities.
“This capability is really kind of what we need at this point. We know that there’s going to be future advancements in technology, but one of the things that is valuable to us is some of the backwards compatibility,” Hickey said. “It allows us to bring legacy devices that are previous generations of 3G, 4G, LTE and up into 5G. So I think as we figure out as a service what the future looks like from standards – whether that’s end user devices or protocols or waveforms or whatever it is – we think that this is going to bridge us pretty well moving forward.”
Training officials said they encountered no big issues during the exercise with the 5G mobile network, which was tied into the base’s fiber infrastructure.
“There were things that we knew, coverage area being the biggest one,” Attig said, noting that “we only had two of the six towers retrofitted for support. We already have four more that are in the works, and ideally we’d like to expand to almost double that. But the end-state is having a persistent coverage area that covers the entire training area that we’re using. So that was a limitation.”
“We were always working through ways to make the network more stable and more efficiently, transmitting data back and forth between different areas on the base,” he said.
During the recent exercise, “we didn’t push the system as far as it could go to its full capability, so I don’t know that we found, you know, what the limitations were,” said Lt. Col. Mike Marron, the aviation lead with Tactical Training and Exercise Control Group at Twentynine Palms. Beyond the 5G “bubble” provide by the COLTs, coverage and “our situational awareness was decreased a little bit. But inside of where the 5G bubbles were, we had extremely high situational awareness.”
As evaluations continue, training officials already see the 5G network positively affecting training, including with after-action reviews by exercise controllers and in managing the training scenario and ranges more efficiently and safely.
“We are evolving how we’ll do exercise control in the future and building the standard operating procedures to make it all work,” Marron said.
Meanwhile, all “Coyote” exercise controllers are getting 5G after-action tools to use for their debrief notes.
“We’re going to start taking videos, photos and start building comprehensive after-actions in stride,” he said. Until now, “guys are going out with a notebook, taking their notes, and then as the information kind of becomes stale” by the time the Coyote confers with the training unit.
Widening the Net
The plan, at least for the near term, is to expand the 5G training network at the base with the purchase of several more mobile towers.
TECOM has spent $1.54 million for the mobile network.
“If we actually want to expand out and get the extra towers that we’re looking to get the next four, we’re talking about $15 million,” Marron said. But six years ago, when they first explored the idea, “that number was like over $50 million.”
“The costs have gone down pretty significantly,” he said, adding that’s due in part “because we’re using previous technology and kind of basically modifying it, so way more cost-effective way for the taxpayer than what we were doing previously or what we were trying to do previously.”
Hickey noted the mobile network towers provide “that coverage area out to what we want and what capability we have,” and at a lower cost than permanent facilities.
“Keeping those towers mobile gives us maximum flexibility, because we can move them around to cover an entire event until we can afford or at least assess what makes the most sense for (military construction projects). Building stuff on hilltop towers that don’t have power and cooling and all the other stuff that may be needed is a challenge,” he said. “So right now, this looks like a viable way for us forward.”
Expanding the 5G network is needed to strengthen the backbone that then enables training across a wider military exercise audience – like Air Force F-35 jets, Army missile teams and Navy ships – and in challenging, realistic, multi-domain warfighting scenarios in the LVC training environment.
“It gives the plug‑and‑play opportunity for what will be future cyberspace and space ranges,” said Maj. Melvin G. Spiese, an operational planner with MAGTF Training Command at Twentynine Palms, and it can avoid the costs and physical limitations of accessing many ranges to train units.
“So as we’re able to get other joint partners for space and cyberspace to be able to participate from their cyber ranges and connecting that to the exercise, that’s when we start working towards all-domain and 21st century-combined arms, which allows that to get the reps and sets for the MAGTF during (service-level training) that then can be replicated forward,” Spiese said.
“It’s not necessarily just the connection of out to the Indo‑Pacific or those kind of geographic locations, but also the other domains that we’re not able to train to yet because the backbone isn’t built to connect to those disparate ranges that are here at 29 Palms,” he said.
Connecting to the Tactical Edge
A big goal of getting 5G networks in place across the Marine Corps and DoD is to enable Marines to practice and build those skills at home or before going live on the range at MCAGCC, or during predeployment training before going to a ship or overseas base. That includes at the tactical edge, where there’s no capable, working or trusting network infrastructure available for Marines to train and stay sharp and ready.
With 5G connectivity, Marron said, “I can push the virtual feeds of the aircraft. Instead of having a live feed from a live aircraft, I can push all that virtually out to Marines in the field.”
It also enables other capabilities to support training, including in areas that have noisy, crowded or contested spectrum.
“Having a persistent 5G bubble in an area allows me to create the effect of a much larger population, because I can use that network to simulate many people when I don’t, in fact, have many people there,” he said. “So when you start talking about the signals environment of making it look like the Indo-Pacific or making it look like Europe or making it look like I can tailor that…. to what’s out there in theater.”
The next time, the exercise force might not be alone in the fight. Marines and other military forces and ships might join in the larger battlespace provided by the wider 5G Marine Training Enterprise Network, which the Marine Corps plans to roll out in Okinawa “early next year,” Spiese said.
That will enable the Okinawa, Japan-based 12th Marine Littoral Regiment to train with 7th Fleet in fleet synthetic training joint exercises, he noted, and it support a proof-of-concept with the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit that will enable stateside units to virtually train with the 31st MEU’s command element before they go overseas.
Officials say the combination of 5G training networks and LVC capabilities will give unit commanders and Marines the ability to increase their “reps and sets” and not be limited by what training ranges or rounds are available.
“We’ve made enterprise-level investments in things like adopting the Navy’s Continuous Training Environment, which we’ve relabeled as the Marine Training Environment, to do enterprise-level transport,” he said. “But what that doesn’t give us – and what this 5G capability and Twentynine Palms is serving as a pathfinder for – is that last mile of connection out to the tactical edge so I can move data between data centers, and we’ve adopted enterprise capabilities for that.”
Tactical Think Tank
Training officials see a wealth of knowledge and combat lessons ahead as the service expands with 5G networked training ranges and high-fidelity, LVC training environments.
Already, the Marine Corps Tactical Instrumentation System sensors that units are using for training exercises on networked or instrumented ranges are generating more realistic force-on-force training feedback and data. Marines and unit commanders can evaluate and review their actions – good or bad – with the new after-action tools, and these along with other devices that capture video and other information can be pooled and shared and distributed across the service, Spiese said.
“When it comes to some of the unrealized potential – when we’re thinking about artificial intelligence, when we’re starting to work towards the future of advanced robotics and autonomous systems, when you are able to collect the data that we have, whether it’s with MCTIS and the other collection tools that are able to be saved – that turns into a repository that future Marines… can tap into for how we’re able to use that for future systems as well as employment methods.”
“There’s a lot of untapped potential that we just haven’t been able to reach out to yet,” he added, “because we’re still on the proving ground for these group of concepts.”
