Integration of 5G with non-terrestrial networks (NTN) is leaving the interesting concept phase, with NATO and US Army leaders laying out what it takes to go from pilots to mission-ready architectures. A panel at the Defense Communications Forum also pointed to maturing standards work, real deployments in pockets, and continuing security and interoperability gaps at the tactical edge.
The same discussion put the focus on making the ground-to-space continuum work for defense, from dynamic routing security and mission assurance through to device and network threats that hide in plain sight cant solve on its own.
From pilots to mission-ready: standards maturing, deployments in pockets
The panel featured leaders from NATO, the US Army, Airbus Defense and Space, and the Mobile Satellite Services Association (MSSA). SIA president Tom Stroup moderated and said non-terrestrial networks are now formally part of the 5G ecosystem enabling coverage, framing convergence as seamless interoperability, dynamic routing security, and mission assurance across the ground-to-space continuum.
Panelists said standards work is maturing and real deployments are already happening in pockets. They also said militaries watching Ukraine are treating cellular communications as something that needs to sit alongside and eventually replace legacy tactical radios.
3GPP release cadence and NTN system evolution
Airbus Defense and Space researcher Amina Boubendir laid out the release path, saying Release 17 has been deployed, Release 18 is maturing, Release 19 is in development, and Release 20 plus 6G studies are underway. She added that satellite players have historically shipped proprietary solutions, and that standardization is what enables interoperability.
The panel also cited consumer-adjacent availability, saying Google Pixel phones with satellite capability use MSS spectrum over the United States. On the IoT side, Nandan Das of MSSA said device-to-device messaging over NB-IoT has been live for over a year, and that trials for NB-IoT voice in automotive environments have already been carried out. Release 20 was described as enhancing NB-IoT to include voice over GEO.
NATOs STANAG 5665 and NWCSP handoff mechanics
The defense standardization thread moved through NATOs NATO Wireless Communications Standardization Project (NWCSP), led from NATO HQ in Brussels by John Stephenson. The panel described NWCSP as staffed largely by 3GPP people working on a pro bono basis, and said NWCSP pushed adoption under STANAG 5665, which became NATOs cellular communications for defense standard.
The panel said the overarching name was kept deliberately generic so it could carry forward to 6G and beyond without another rename. NWCSP is described as sunsetting at the start of 2027, with configuration management work being picked up by NATOs Digital Policy Committee.
Tactical edge problems: range, access, and secure interoperability
On tactical constraints, Colonel Jeffrey Couillard said one of the main challenges in a military environment is range, access, and maneuverability, adding that deploying a 5G node in a fixed location effectively tethers forces to it. The panel said the Armys PACE plan (Primary, Alternate, Contingency, Emergency) currently lists 5G somewhere down the chain, and that the goal is to push 5G to Primary to deliver rich content, live video feeds, and forward-edge situational awareness.
Couillard said, We would like to be able to hide in plain sight, and that may be something that we have to work on, in the context of threats including rogue cell towers, hijacked handsets, and geographical tracking of devices. The panel also flagged that 3GPP prompted a study item on GNSS-resilient architectures after NATO standardization work revealed NTN dependence on satellite connectivity solutions as a starting point for 3GPP implementations.
Whats next: virtualized ground segments and security trade-offs
Boubendir said much mil-SATCOM and gov-SATCOM still runs on proprietary waveforms, while work on virtualizing the ground segment uses edge and cloud compute plus IEEEs DIFI to treat downlinked RF as IP or Ethernet over standard transport. The panel described the military waveform question as one concrete place where convergence is being actively studied.
The security discussion stressed that standardized protocol stacks include features such as network slicing, NAS encryption, and IMS security, but that MSSA is also working on feeder link standardization and aggregate interference management across continents and ITU regions. The panel said MSSAs aggregate interference management work is headed for WRC-27, while Das warned that there is no such thing as perfect security and that there are trade-offs with pros and cons.