What project 725 buys
Focus investment on 1) 5G/6G Commercial Technology application and Commercial/Military shared resources that leverage both commercial and coalition networks without requiring new spectrum access and 2) expanding military communications coverage and increasing resiliency by integrating non-terrestrial networks (NTN) and high-altitude platforms to extend 5G/6G coverage to challenging areas and provide backup for existing areas. At end-state, deliver high availability wireless communication systems with security assurance across all DoW operational settings by exploiting the growing DoW diversity, coalition, and commercial communication option to provide high-availability secure communication and providing wireless network risk assessment tools and mitigations that inform operational decision-making. Current efforts will leverage world-wide high availability commercial networks for assured and resilient DoW communications. Future efforts will build on today’s developments in non-terrestrial networks toward multi-layer non-terrestrial networks that will provide ubiquitous access to communication and compute. Prototyped and/or enhanced capabilities will be based on technologies such as anomaly detection and zero-trust policy enforcement to maximize availability and resilience for wireless connectivity; multi-networking across wired and wireless systems for finding and exploiting alternate paths and redundant paths to ensure secure and reliable communication; Radio Access Network (RAN) Sharing that leverage commercial and private mobile network operators; and 5G non-terrestrial networks that use satellite, drones, and other low-altitude airborne vehicles to provide connectivity. These technologies will enable warfighters to access mobile communications anywhere they operate leveraging existing commercial 5G infrastructure and enhanced 5G network security architectures.
- Product Development
Project 725 funding, FY2025–FY2031
Prior years are actuals, the budget year is the request, and the outyears are the FYDP plan. Estimate types are colored and never summed into one figure. Projects carry the full five-year plan; the activities inside them stop at the budget year.
| Fiscal Year | Estimate Type | Amount ($M) |
|---|---|---|
| FY2025 | Actual | 46.2 |
| FY2026 | Enacted | 36.9 |
| FY2027 | Request | 0.0 |
| FY2028 | Outyear | 0.0 |
| FY2029 | Outyear | 0.0 |
| FY2030 | Outyear | 0.0 |
| FY2031 | Outyear | 0.0 |
1 accomplishment / planned program
The R-2A exhibit — the only level of the budget that describes work that has not happened yet. Activities carry the prior, current and budget year only, no five-year plan. Coverage is partial across the corpus, so count activities, never total them.
FY2026 to FY2027 change The decrease of $21.865 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 identify, develop, and demonstrate agile and operationally relevant RAN Sharing solutions to leverage commercial and private mobile network operators; develop and demonstrate single-layer 5G NTN composed of air or space platforms; continue to conduct 5G security assessments at the classified level at INL; and culminate and transition remaining tasks relative to ongoing project closeouts.
FY2025 accomplishments Continue to conduct 5G security assessments at both classified and unclassified levels and testing of new vulnerability mitigation techniques using the Exemplar Network at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). Transition congested/contested spectrum prototyping and experimentation activities such as Secure Transit over Untrusted Networks (STUN) and Command and Control FutureG INDOPACOM Relocatable Experimentation (CFIRE). STUN was integrated into the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command Orient Shield 2024 exercise to enhance the security of data in transit between U.S. Army command elements and distributed command posts throughout Japan. STUN participation in Orient Shield 2024 serves as a…