# Project 724 — Expeditionary and Tactical Use

**Program element:** 0604011D8Z — Next Generation Information Communications Technology (5G)  
**Project:** 724  
**Component:** Defense-Wide  
**Appropriation:** 0400 — RDT&E, Defense-Wide  
**Budget Activity:** 4 — Advanced Component Development & Prototypes  
**Vintage:** President's Budget PB2027  
**Canonical URL:** https://hitchintel.com/programs/0604011D8Z/724  
**Parent:** https://hitchintel.com/programs/0604011D8Z

## Summary

Project 724 — Expeditionary and Tactical Use requests $0.0M in FY2027, down 100% on FY2026. 1 R-2A activity decomposes the request.

## Funding profile

| Fiscal Year | Estimate Type | Amount ($M) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | Actual | 36.5 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 27.3 |
| FY2027 | Request | 0.0 |
| FY2028 | Outyear | 0.0 |
| FY2029 | Outyear | 0.0 |
| FY2030 | Outyear | 0.0 |
| FY2031 | Outyear | 0.0 |

> Estimate types are not summed. This project is one leaf of PE 0604011D8Z; the PE total is the sum of its projects, never added to them.

## What project 724 buys

Focus investment on 1) waveform resilience for tactical and expeditionary environments, 2) simplified network deployment (logical and physical), management, and orchestration, and 3) heterogenous network integration for Partner Force interoperability and interchangeability. At end-state, provide innovation that enables commercial network technologies in tactical operations and advance 5G/6G technology for scalable, interoperable, and resilient warfighting networks to execute effective communications for coalition coordination with Allies and Partners. When able, expeditionary and tactical projects will be evaluated in a deployed expeditionary environment over tactical and applicable commercial 5G/6G infrastructure with operationally relevant numbers of users and geographic scale. Current efforts will continue to leverage scalable, interoperable, and resilient warfighting networks that support Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control. Future efforts will optimize within the constraints of commercial 5G/6G standards by investigating application of relevant areas ahead of commercial markets and advocating for tactically relevant, high payoff seedling research in artificial intelligence, quantum technologies, operational security, and future standards development. The Army Tactical Mobility project is a cost effective, combat-ready 5G On-The-Move (OTM) Command and Control (C2) capability that meets latency, throughput, range, and resiliency objectives. This program will address operational needs and future Secure Cellular Program requirements for survivability of Army networks to include the distributed Command Post (i.e., mobility, dispersion, concealment). Additionally, in partnership with the NATO Cooperative Cyber Defense Center of Excellence, the Scalable Interoperable Resilient-5G (SIR-5G) initiative employs 5G secure roaming, Radio Access Network (RAN) Sharing, and internetworking to provide a 5G warfighting network that NATO allies can directly procure as they increase their defense spending.

**R-3 lines of work:** Product Development.

## Activities (R-2A) — 1

| Activity | FY2025 | FY2026 | FY2027 | Move | Page |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Expeditionary and Tactical Use | 36.5 | 12.3 | — | −100% | — |

> Activities carry the prior, current and budget year only — no five-year plan. In the request year they partition this project exactly; in earlier years they can under-cover it.

### Expeditionary and Tactical Use

**FY2026 to FY2027 change.** The decrease of $12.281 million between FY 2026 to FY 2027 reflects a realignment of DoW funding.

**FY2026 plans — current year.** In FY 2026, the program will continue to improve interoperability for forces from different NATO Allies to share data and coordinate actions in near real-time, under stress and in contested conditions; develop advanced expeditionary 5G tactical network communication capabilities that provide high bandwidth, high data speeds on a resilient, secure architecture and cross-platform compatibility for both commercial and specialized devices; develop a unified, software-defined radio platform integrating 5G capabilities and tactical waveforms on a CMOSS architecture, simplifying military communications and enhancing interoperability; and complete remaining transition tasks for the Tactical Mobility effort with the Army.

**FY2025 accomplishments.** The DoD will culminate and transition activities at the remaining 5G experiment sites. The program will continue technology transitions and transferring sites to services through collaboration with DoD 5G CFT. These projects include efforts at Naval Station Norfolk and Camp Pendleton. Naval Station Norfolk experimentation developed a 5G Reference Architecture for cost-effective Ship-wide and Pier-side 5G infrastructure testbed to host reliable and repeatable experimentation, grow organic knowledge, and build industry and academic partnerships. Additionally, the Camp Pendleton EABO project developed and deployed a private, standalone, multiband, 5G Open Radio Access Network (RAN) testbed with nomadic towers and cores, mobile edge computing (MEC), and mobile 5G relays for Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations. Localized full scale 5G mobile cellular networks such as the Army Tactical Mobility project will continue to support military application experimentation at select DoD Service sites. DoD will further continue to leverage Prototype Physical Layer Leverage (PL2) to employ standard 5G capabilities to provide a scalable and interoperable warfighting network among allies and partners, allowing tactical radios to integrate with 5G networks and security enhancements

## What is NOT on this page

Congressional marks, the R-2 mission description and acquisition strategy, the industry vs government split of the whole request, and related program elements are recorded at **program-element** grain — an NDAA mark lands on a PE, never on a project. They are at https://hitchintel.com/programs/0604011D8Z.

## Source & machine access

- **Source:** FY2027 Office of the Secretary of Defense RDT&E Budget Justification, Exhibits R-2/R-2A/R-3, PE 0604011D8Z project 724 (PB PB2027).
- **MCP:** `mcp.hitchintel.com` — `budget_get_program_element(pe="0604011D8Z")`.

*HitchAI is an independent intelligence service, not affiliated with the U.S. Department of Defense. Budget figures are requests/estimates, not obligations.*