The end of ‘airplane mode’

OPINION:

Since the advent of the iPhone in 2007, wireless networks have struggled to keep up with the capabilities of wireless devices. Oddly, this conflict was largely caused by military procurement policies. Happily, help is finally on the way.

Europe has enacted rules allowing the use of wireless devices aboard aircraft for texting, internet surfing and even phone calls, ending “airplane mode” as we know it. The U.S. lags behind despite wishes expressed by our regulators for a decade to allow Americans to enjoy this freedom.

These issues are connected by access to radio spectrum, the fuel that allows wireless devices to communicate. Commercial network operators in the U.S. are not allowed as much spectrum as their foreign counterparts because our military has the world’s most voracious spectrum appetite.

Aerial systems — drones, manned aircraft, rockets, surveillance satellites and the like — are the heaviest consumers of spectrum, for good reasons. The homemade Ukrainian drones that hit major bases in Russia recently were piloted by operators hundreds of miles away.

While the details of the Ukrainian technology are secret, we can readily surmise that operators and drones were connected by radios. Such systems generally give operators access to cameras and control systems aboard the drones.

It’s also a good bet that the Ukrainian drones use the latest-generation commercial electronics because older technology rarely offers such capabilities. This is the issue that has long plagued the U.S. military.

Traditionally, the radios in U.S. military aircraft have been so tightly integrated as to be impossible to upgrade without completely disassembling the plane. Such a design makes it next to impossible for aircraft to benefit from the advances in radio technology that consumers enjoy when we upgrade to the newest devices.

This feature has been a point of conflict in closed-door sessions on spectrum policy for at least a decade. The military ultimately got the message and revised its approach for the recently announced B-21 Raider, the first new bomber in more than 30 years.

The B-21 incorporates an open architecture, cloud computing, modular hardware and agile software. These concepts are not everyday ideas, but suffice it to say they’re basic to the smartphones most of us carry. The key feature is the ability to upgrade the radio by unplugging the old one and plugging in a new one.

Because of the design limitations in pre-B-21 military equipment, the Defense Department has been forced to devise a convoluted scheme for sharing spectrum between occasional military use and everyday commercial systems. In its current form, the so-called citizens band radio system (CBRS) gives the government the power to silence civilian users at any time.

This form of sharing is so crude that it may as well be called “taking your ball and going home.” Commercial systems are capable of more effective and efficient sharing because they have more up-to-date radios than military systems.

Needless to say, CBRS has not found favor with commercial operators. For businesses and consumers, networks need to be reliable and available, which means that the latest flavors of wireless networking need to be deployed.

The B-21 isn’t here yet, and even if it were, the military and the civilian sector alike have huge inventories of equipment that lack the up-to-date design of the new aircraft. Aircraft with out-of-date radio equipment don’t coexist well with newer gear, as we’ve seen in the controversy regarding 5G phones and old-fashioned radio altimeters.

It would be wise for the aviation industry as a whole to take a more proactive approach to its current fleet where practical. While airlines are improving their fleets to better coexist with 5G, they should invest in an approach that anticipates further upgrades in the future.

More advanced aircraft afford greater convenience to citizens as well as make air travel safer. If we can learn anything from the European experience in ending airplane mode, it should be that design improvements have both short- and long-term benefits.

Airplane mode is a crutch that protected obsolete aviation radios from cellphone interference. It became unnecessary when avionics were improved.

CBRS is airplane mode for the military, protecting obsolete sensing systems from cellular interference. Radio engineering can do better and does better when procurement specifications allow it to.

Increased reliance on wireless networks by consumers, government and industry mean that inherited systems need to become more reliable and efficient. It’s time to take the U.S. military out of airplane mode. Where commercial systems lead, the military must follow.

• Richard Bennett is the publisher of High Tech Forum and a pioneer in ethernet and Wi-Fi network design.