# Project 725 — Ubiquitous, Secure, and Instant Access

**Program element:** 0604011D8Z — Next Generation Information Communications Technology (5G)  
**Project:** 725  
**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/725  
**Parent:** https://hitchintel.com/programs/0604011D8Z

## Summary

Project 725 — Ubiquitous, Secure, and Instant Access 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 | 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 |

> 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 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.

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

## Activities (R-2A) — 1

| Activity | FY2025 | FY2026 | FY2027 | Move | Page |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ubiquitous, Secure, and Instant Access | 36.2 | 21.9 | — | −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.

### Ubiquitous, Secure, and Instant Access

**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 proof-of-concept event for STUN’s inclusion in the FutureG-funded U.S. Army-Japan (USAR-J) Dark Horizons communications concept. The CFIRE Mobile Test Infrastructure team provided a Portable Operational Network Infrastructure (PONI) kit for critical communications during the deployment of the 36th Munitions Squadron Tactical Ammunition Rapid Response Package (TARRP) as part of the VALIANT SHIELD 2024 exercise. The CFIRE team also provided a PONI for 5G network coverage in support of airfield restoration in the Northern Mariana Islands. Additionally, CFIRE activities at the Lualualei Annex of Joint Base Pearl Harbor Hickam recently demonstrated bi-directional Radio Access Network (RAN) Sharing between Naval Air Station Whidbey Island (NASWI) and Lualualei. This lays the foundation for many more RAN sharing experiments including the integration of non-terrestrial networks for data backhaul.

## 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 725 (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.*