Anduril Industries is launching a new variant of its Sentry situational awareness systems to deliver secure 5G communication capabilities in remote, austere environments that lack infrastructure, the company announced today.

The 5G Comms Sentry Tower (CST), powered by Anduril’s Lattice software, combines the company’s existing Sentry Tower hardware with Nokia Federal Solutions’ private 5G technology to deliver a rapidly deployable, reliable and secure network that can support operations in the most remote and rugged environments, the company release states.

While 5G has advantages -- like higher data speeds and the ability to connect more devices -- over solutions such as tactical radios and satellite communications, the dependence of traditional 5G networks on fixed infrastructure presents cost and security challenges, the company said.

“Working alongside mission partners in the field, we witnessed these challenges firsthand: existing 5G solutions ultimately fall short of providing the connectivity, flexibility, and deployability required for the most remote operations,” Anduril said.

Comparatively, the 5G CST is designed to integrate communications, computational power and an onboard power supply to deliver mission-critical cellular connectivity in hours. The technology can cover a wide surface area for operations of any size, as well. Each individual CST offers a coverage range of several kilometers, and multiple CSTs can be linked together for broader-ranging operations, the company said.

5G CSTs also run on secure architecture, supporting sensitive operations and risk mitigation without relying on commercial or foreign networks, the release states.

The technology is built to be infrastructure-independent, meaning it can be fully operational in less than three hours, even in areas with no existing network or fixed infrastructure.

Since the 5G CST is part of the Sentry family of systems, Anduril can support high-rate production levels at the outset by building on the existing production-ready subsystems already fielded at scale that are associated with Sentry systems.

“As the newest addition to the Sentry family of systems, 5G CST builds on the proven dependability of different Sentry variants that have now scaled to over 400 towers globally,” Anduril said.