Military spectrum management is becoming one of the most critical enablers of success in today’s urban battlefield. The modern combat environment increasingly saturates with multiple radio systems operating simultaneously. Today’s networks range from individual soldiers flying one drone to command centers coordinating swarms of dozens or even hundreds of UAVs in dense urban terrain, integrated with advanced information systems.
In this crowded space, each platform, like soldier radios, drones, and vehicles, adds an emitter to the shared spectrum.
The result is a “battlespace filled with RF signals.” Even without enemy jamming, friendly radios, nearby networks, and civilian devices can interfere with one another. The military now depends more on RF spectrum for data, sensing, and intelligence. However, the high demand is causing nearby systems to interfere with each other’s connections.
To cope, industry has pushed aggressive spectral techniques: advanced waveforms and modulation schemes, beamforming and directional antennas, and time-sharing or scheduling of channels. Planners can share channels on a set schedule. This way, different units can use the same frequency at different times.
Directional beam-steering (e.g. phased-array antennas) helps spatially reuse frequencies by focusing energy. These innovations boost throughput, but they cannot overcome the fundamental limits of spectrum supply.
Skyrocketing Throughput Demands
Unmanned systems are growing quickly on the battlefield. Each new drone has high-bandwidth sensors like video, lidar, and radar. These sensors create a lot of data. As UAV and missile networks grow, commanders demand higher data rates (“throughput”) for command & control and sensor sharing.
Finite Spectrum, Fixed Since Its Discovery
The electromagnetic spectrum is a fixed natural resource. James Clerk Maxwell’s theory in the 1860s suggested there are many different frequencies. Then, in 1887, Heinrich Hertz’s experiments created radio waves at low frequencies. In practice, however, physics and regulation limit the total usable radio-frequency bands.
The allocations we have today essentially date back to those early discoveries. We cannot “generate” additional spectrum; we can only share it more effectively. This fixed scarcity means that we must use what we have better to meet any increase in demand. We cannot expect new sources to open.
Rising Interference Challenges
Modern trends like anti-jamming and channel evasion are now standard tools. Programs like these radios can detect jamming signals, contributing to evolving electronic warfare capabilities. They automatically change their frequency, waveform, and timing to keep connections strong.
Such technology seeks to ensure robust comms even under heavy hostile jamming or interference. The irony is that a substantial source of interference is often friendly. This includes nearby command radios, other UAV networks, and even civilian devices that accidentally block each other.
The problem of “spectral Fraticide” has become extremely serious. Co-site interference happens when multiple friendly systems share limited space.
Many people now view this issue as a significant challenge. In dense urban operations, dozens of radios and sensors may compete in a few blocks, greatly increasing interference risk. Thus, our toolkit must handle both malicious jammers and benign overcrowding.
A Three-Part Response
Addressing these challenges requires a comprehensive, adaptive approach. At Commtact, we view the solution as a coordinated, three-part response:
1. Mission Planning and Real-Time Modification
Before battle, a mission manager plays a central role in organizing communications. All assets such as UAVs, vehicles, and soldiers are placed on a geo-referenced communication map. The mission manager incorporates data rates, modulation schemes, LOS propagation models, and expected fade margins, ensuring realistic link planning. It accounts for terrain obstacles, building density, and known interference zones. This pre-battle preparation establishes a robust baseline that can later be adapted in real time.
2. Adaptive Interference Mitigation:
Once the battle begins, however, the situation becomes dynamic and unpredictable. Real-time sensing and channel evasion or Sense & Avoid capabilities are essential. Each radio node continuously monitors the spectrum, detecting interference, congestion, or jamming attempts. Sensing systems identify whether interference originates from hostile jammers, neighboring friendly units, or environmental noise. Based on this input, the system can initiate channel evasion: automatically searching for a cleaner channel, adjusting modulation parameters, or re-allocating time slots to preserve link quality.
The real-time data gathered through sensing and channel evasion is continuously uploaded to the mission manager, creating a live operational picture of the electromagnetic environment. This allows planners and automated algorithms to adapt the communication plan on the fly, reallocating bandwidth, updating frequency assignments, or shifting traffic through alternate paths such as SATCOM.
Units equipped with beyond-line-of-sight SATCOM on the Move (satellite links) can route their data via space. SATCOM provides global coverage and high-bandwidth connectivity. If a ground LOS link has interference, a UAV with a SATCOM on the Move modem can send its data through a satellite. This acts as a backup channel and avoids the busy local spectrum.
3. Human and AI Coordination: The main focus is the human operator, similar to a commander or spectrum manager. AI tools support them more and more.
During planning, humans set priorities and declare which users are “critical”. In execution, automated AI-driven algorithms can assist with rapid spectrum decisions. For example, machine-learning routines can dynamically select the best communication paths and adapt transmission parameters to complex environments.
As networks grow, we expect more independent military spectrum management. However, human oversight is still important for mission priorities and rules of engagement. (The collaboration between human planners and intelligent radios will be the topic of ongoing development.)
Conclusion
The future of battlefield communications will not be defined by a single technological breakthrough, but by a new philosophy. One that views the electromagnetic spectrum as a fluid, dynamic, and contested domain. Success will belong to networks that are strong, intelligent, and seamlessly connected, where meticulous mission planning is fused with agile, real-time decision-making under the guidance of empowered human operators.
Within this framework, effective spectrum management becomes the cornerstone of operational superiority. At Commtact, we deliver the complete “Three-Part Response”: advanced mission planning, adaptive interference mitigation, and seamless human-AI coordination. The time has come to build Resilient Communication systems that do more than communicate—they adapt, endure, and dominate the battlespace of frequencies.
