4G LTE is going into battle with the United States Navy.
According to published reports on Friday, the Navy will send the USS Kearsarge and USS San Antonio to the Persian Gulf next month with its brand new 4G LTE network.
The network, Wired confirms, “is a microwave-based wireless wide-area network (WWAN) that will augment the satellite-based communications on board the amphibious assault ship Kearsarge and the transport dock San Antonio.”
On board testing should be completed within the next two weeks. Several hundred sailors and marines are similarly undergoing “4G-training.”
Based on what we’re told, the primary incentive for the 4G LTE upgrade is to better equip the two ships to combat pirates.
“The air node will allow them to have a mobile air network. We want to test that for anti-piracy missions,” says Doug Abbotts, a spokesman for the Navy’s Naval Air Systems Command. “The air node goes over the suspected pirate [via the helicopter] and the people who are advancing on the pirates, so they can shoot video through sensors on the helicopters and that video can be transferred to the ship via the network, or transmitted to a patrol boat.”
