Lockheed Martin/Microsoft Join Forces to Enhance 5G Solutions

Aerospace giant Lockheed Martin announced a strategic partnership with Microsoft to enhance and secure 5G military solutions (5G.MIL) for the US Department of Defense’s cyber domains.

With this partnership, Lockheed Martin will utilize Microsoft’s 5G and Microsoft Azure services to bring improved connectivity to these solutions, and secure data streams for battlefield assets. Microsoft’s technology will also help expand the capabilities of Lockheed Martin’s Hybrid Base Station, and provide protection against adversarial communications interference.

“Microsoft’s expertise in cloud computing and scaling complement our vision to enable secure communications and run critical mission applications at the edge,” said Dan Rice, VP of 5G.MIL® Programs at Lockheed Martin. “Innovative commercial partnerships like this help us accelerate and deploy the transformative capabilities that can best help our customers address a rapidly evolving threat landscape.”

To assess the connectivity of these 5G.MIL solutions, employees participated in a live demonstration at Lockheed Martin Space’s 5G test range in Colorado. Both companies tested a number of critical components, including 5G and tactical radio (Link-16) interoperability, and real-time radio frequency (RF) analytics supported by Azure Private 5G Core, Azure Arc, Azure Government, and Azure commercial cloud environments.

“Today’s announcement brings together Lockheed Martin’s transformative base station technology and the power of Microsoft’s cloud capabilities to deliver mission-critical solutions at the tactical edge,” added Tom Keane, corporate vice president, Mission Engineering, Microsoft. “It is the latest step forward in our joint commitment to solving some of our nation’s toughest problems for a more secure future.”

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