US Marines to test Lockheed Martin's portable 5G system

ANNAPOLIS JUNCTION, Md. – Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) delivered the final Phase 1 Initial Prototype 5G testbed variant for the Open Systems Interoperable and Reconfigurable Infrastructure Solution (OSIRIS) to the Marine Corps program management team aboard Marine Corps (USMC) Base Camp Pendleton, California, and will begin mobile network experimentation. OSIRIS is a 5G communications network infrastructure testbed for expeditionary operations experimentation for the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering's (OUSD R&E) FutureG & 5G Office and the USMC that was awarded to Lockheed Martin in 2021.

Phase 2, experimentation, continues Lockheed Martin's partnership with the USMC to integrate specific mission applications onto the OSIRIS 5G testbed for evaluation. In parallel, emerging wireless technology will be assessed and selected for use as part of the continued build out of the OSIRIS 5G testbed concluding with three distinct 5G standalone network configurations:

The Lockheed Martin-led team, with subcontractors Intel Corporation (Nasdaq: INTC), Radisys Corporation (NASDAQ: RSYS) and Rampart Communications, Inc., has worked closely with the PM team aboard Camp Pendleton, and the team will continue their close collaboration with the USMC and OUSD R&E over the next 15 months to test, evaluate and ultimately demonstrate the technology as part of a Fleet Marine Force (FMF) event in the Southern California region.

Increased Bandwidth, Faster Speeds in Minutes Instead of Hours

To progress from phase 1 to the experimentation phase, the team successfully integrated an Open Radio Unit (O-RU) with Lockheed Martin's hybrid base station running Intel's FlexRAN reference software and hardware technology including Intel Xeon processors, ethernet adapters and accelerators. This integration makes the OSIRIS system one of the first tactical 5G standalone small cell systems compliant with the Open-Radio Access Network (O-RAN) 7.2 split architecture.

O-RAN 7.2 split architecture compliance optimizes the OSIRIS system to oversee increases in bandwidth while also maximizing virtualization of shared resources like radios.

This is crucial to supporting the USMC's Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO) goals, which involve Marines operating in contested environments with increased bandwidth requirements. Additionally, the OSIRIS system aims to reduce overall set-up time.

OSIRIS, a key initiative of Lockheed Martin's 5G.MIL® programs, will help address the need for test facilities that enable rapid experimentation and dual-use application prototyping. Here is how:

Read the full press release here.

Lockheed Martin