Why Donald Trump Must Protect S-Band Radar Spectrum for U.S. Defense

[rangerrebew]

Why Donald Trump Must Protect S-Band Radar Spectrum for U.S. Defense

ByRebecca GrantPublished12 hours ago
 
Donald Trump Must Guard Spectrum for Radars to Defend the USA: No, the U.S. military cannot share a critical piece of S-band radar spectrum with commercial 5G wireless providers.  Not if the new Trump administration wants to improve defenses against mystery drones and guard against threats of missiles from China and Russia.

“President Trump has talked about an Iron Dome for America,” incoming National Security Mike Waltz told CBS News, referring to Israel’s missile defense system. “That needs to include drones as well, not just adversarial actions like hypersonic missiles,” Waltz said.

The priority is clear.  However, if the new Trump administration is serious about missile defense for the United States, or any improvements at all, the new team will have to engage on the priority of keeping S-band spectrum clear for military radars that track those missiles and drones.

https://www.19fortyfive.com/2025/01/why-donald-trump-must-protect-s-band-radar-spectrum-for-u-s-defense/

[PeteS in CA]

The S-band is 2GHz-4GHz. Operation up to and beyond 100GHz is doable, but the US military has a massive investment in S-band radar, and higher frequencies do have limitations.

The FCC and Congress have been screwing over the military with spectrum shifting for decades: assign a commercially unviable part of the spectrum to the military; the military develops the technology for using that band; Congress/FCC reassigns the band to commercial use; assign a commercially unviable part of the spectrum to the military; rinse and repeat.