LTE: When the soldier’s battlefield phone can only be the best

What if soldiers could communicate with each other as easily on the battlefield as they do between their barracks?  

In their civilian life, military personnel enjoy all the advantages of 4G technology on their personal smartphones, whether it’s sharing pictures, videos, messages or documents, or making calls.  In operations, it’s another story, with clunky, voice centric push-to-talk radio sets assuring most communication. 

That’s about to change with Thales 4G solutions, Thales’s sleek new multimedia communication tool, based on private LTE technology, that will allow soldiers to exchange data, pictures, and video securely and easily in complement to their radio communication set.

Thales secured and private 4G solution for Defence brings them the benefits of 4G and secure collaborative multimedia applications whenever and wherever they're needed. So it truly transforms 4G into military grade 4G, and it will revolutionise the way the military communicates on critical missions.

Take a typical battlefield situation. With classic military technology, soldiers lose precious time communicating the lay of the land and the position of the enemy. With LTE, they will be able to collectively “see” the situation through images and video shared in real time, exchange voice or text messages and other data, and make quick, secure, and dependable decisions.

Thales’s robust, military-grade 4G solution has been created to withstand harsh weather conditions – such as intense heat, sand storms or heavy rain - and it is lighter and easier to set up on any platform on the battlefield than conventional’s 4G equipment. What’s more, the solution is pre-integrated with other battlefield communication systems, such as satellites or combat radio systems. And, in case of contested radio environement, the system will switch back to combat radio systems and will ensure critical services such as voice and BFT are always operational. 

In addition, “LTE, as a complement to existing military communication systems, will allow the military to collect lots of information that can then be used to enrich situational awareness and enhance mission continuity and success,” says Jérôme Brouet, Product Line Manager, Network and Infrastructure Systems.  « Plus the solution has been designed to natively evolve towards 5G with even higher speed that e.g. will allow an even more fluid transmission of video.” 

So, with the Thales 4G solution, military personnel finally have access to all the real-time voice, data and video functionality they need to keep ahead of the adversary.