Tom Karako
Electromagnetic spectrum is a scarce national resource with significant implications for national security and economic growth. The S-band, spanning from 2–4 gigahertz (GHz), is a crucial frequency for air and missile defense radar. Over the years, large portions of what were previously military bandwidths have been auctioned off. Some telecommunication associations and Chinese-dominated international telecom bodies are now pressing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to auction off the low-3 range of the S-band.
The low 3 S-band (3.10–3.45 GHz) is one area that has been preserved for military use alone, and for good reason. For air and missile defense, the S-band is a Goldilocks zone within the electromagnetic spectrum: low enough to propagate freely through rain and other forms of weather, and high enough to accurately classify and track inbound missiles, drones, and aircraft. Preserving continuous and incumbent military use of the low-3 S-band is necessary for the operation of numerous defense assets, including the Golden Dome initiative. The risks of an S-band auction have been widely recognized by congressional, military, and senior defense officials across both the Biden and Trump administrations. Similar issues apply to space and intelligence applications in the 7-8 GHz band.
Advocates of selling the low-3 have proposed transitioning military radars out of the S-band at the cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, years of delay, new layers of bureaucratic procedures, and the disruption of decades of intelligence gathering about how missiles appear to radars operating in the S-band. Auctioning off the low-3 S-band spectrum is a bad idea.
Civilian use of this bandwidth for 5G would disrupt the operation of critical U.S. air and missile defense radars, including the Navy’s Aegis SPY family, the Army’s TPQ-53, the Marine Corps’ Ground/Air Task-Oriented Radar, and the Space Force’s Long Range Discrimination Radar. High-power radars that must track faint missile signatures thousands of miles away would be adversely affected by ambient noise from telecom use. Notably, China does not permit outdoor commercial use of the low-3. Those countries that do allow it degrade the ability of S-band radars to operate in their defense.
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