Air Force Spectrum Relocation Costs and Warfighting Impacts

Spectrum Relocation Concerns

• ⚠️ Senator Rounds highlights concerns from 24 senior DoD officials regarding the serious negative consequences of vacating the 3.1 to 3.45 gigahertz band of spectrum for warfighting capabilities.
• 💰 The Department of the Navy alone estimates relocating their systems would cost approximately $250 billion.

Impact on Air Force Capabilities

• 📡 The Air Force Secretary acknowledges the difficulty, and in some ways impossibility, of moving systems from this band due to the physics of how systems operate and atmospheric energy absorption.
• ❓ There is a struggle to analyze and quantify the cost and impact of such a move, with the possibility that some capabilities may be difficult or impossible to replicate in other bands.
• 🎯 Near-peer adversaries understand the significance of this spectrum band, particularly for radar operations, and would view its abandonment as an unforced error.

Space Force and "Golden Dome" System

• 🚀 General Salsman explains that radars operating in the 3.1 to 3.45 gigahertz band are essential for the "Golden Dome" system to detect hypersonics, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles.
• 🛰️ Vacating this spectrum would suffer the sensing part of the Golden Dome, impacting space domain awareness, which relies heavily on ground-based sensors and systems like the DARk system.

Cost Estimation Challenges

• ❓ The Air Force Secretary states that a precise cost estimate for relocating systems is currently unavailable due to the lack of a coherent plan for where and how to maneuver or move.
• 📈 Even if migration were possible, replicating the same capabilities in a different band would be difficult and time-consuming.