There is a huge debate going on right now in Washington regarding the electromagnetic spectrum.
The crux of the debate centers around whether the Federal government should auction additional portions of the electromagnetic spectrum to private industry, or if it should refrain from doing so in the name of national security.
The portions of the electromagnetic spectrum in question are those that fall between 3.1 to 3.45 gigahertz (GHz) and 7 and 8 GHz. Telecommunication companies for years have utilized parts of the electromagnetic spectrum to deliver faster internet speeds, more reliable connectivity, and breakthroughs in artificial intelligence.
By auctioning off additional parts of the electromagnetic spectrum, as the House Energy and Commerce Committee approved to do earlier this month, the government could not only reap billions of dollars in tax revenues, but also enable advances in wireless technology in the private sector that could support the development of driverless cars, more reliable remote surgeries, or other types of technological breakthroughs.
President Trump indicated in a May 20 post that the U.S. government should auction off large chunks of the spectrum in order to ensure that the United States can remain a world-leader in 6G technologies and WiFi accessibility. These are critically important goals, and President Trump is correct that America must remain a leader in these technology areas.
Such an auction, however, could come with a significant cost if certain parts of the spectrum were not fenced off for national security reasons.
In particular, the 3.1 to 3.45 GHz band of the spectrum that may be auctioned off is currently reserved for military applications and are critical to missile defenses such as the Navy’s Aegis system. These systems are central to defending against ballistic, cruise, and hypersonic missiles—all of which are required if the United States is going to build the Golden Dome for America missile defense architecture.
As missile defense expert Matt Costlow noted during an interview for this piece, “Auctioning off those parts of the spectrum that U.S. missile defenses use would endanger the entire Golden Dome project, leave us more vulnerable to missile attacks, and could potentially cause tens of billions of dollars in added costs for workarounds, not to mention years of delays.”
As then Commander of US Northern Command, Gen. Glan Van Herck, testified before the Senate in 2023, “I am concerned about the potential national security impacts of auctioning or selling off that spectrum. It’s my assessment there will be impacts… to our domain awareness capabilities…There are multiple platforms to include maritime homeland defense platforms, airborne early warning platforms, ground-based early warning platforms that enable me to provide threat warning, attack assessment, and defend from potentially airborne assets” that rely on the 3.1 to 3.45 GHz spectrum.
A 2023 Congressional Research Service report noted that “while an auction of the segment for commercial use could drive wireless expansion and generate significant revenues, technical experts assert that reallocation of the band from federal to nonfederal use would require complex and high-cost modifications to DOD systems and would affect DOD operations.”
In 2023, Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy John Plumb told Congress that replacing Aegis radar with one capable of using different frequencies would cost more than $100 billion. Plumb went on to note “that particular portion of the band… from 3.1-3.45, is absolutely essential for DoD operations. And I’ll just say we’ve looked at what it might take to vacate, by which mean leave that band and go somewhere else, and we don’t know where else we would go.”
Similarly, then Secretary of the Navy Carlos Del Toro testified that it could cost a quarter of a trillion dollars to relocate simply the Navy systems to a different spectrum band if it loses access to bands of the spectrum that would be auctioned off.
In 2024, General Stephen Whiting, the commander of U.S. Space Command opposed the sale of both the 3.1 to 3.45 GHz and the 7.0 to 8.0 GHz parts of the electromagnetic spectrum when he testified before Congress that “the electromagnetic spectrum is vital to us. It’s the only way to get information back from space. That’s our satellite communications, our missile warning, our positioning, navigation and timing.”
While there is a potential for sharing key frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum between the military and the private sector, and the Defense Department has even put out a report examining how such an arrangement may be done, critics are skeptical of the efficacy of such a “spectrum sharing” arrangement.
As Bryan Clark, an expert on missile defense, testified before the Senate, “The U.S. military will require more, not less, access to the electromagnetic spectrum in the coming decade. Facing numerical and geographic disadvantages against an opponent like China, U.S. forces will need electronic warfare systems that can jam, decoy, and deceive enemy sensors by operating outside traditional US frequencies and inside those used by adversaries…To prevent the U.S. from fielding these critical capabilities, China is attempting to convince the U.S. government to unilaterally disarm in the spectrum.”
Mr. Clark went on to note that without access to these critical spectrum frequencies, President Trump’s missile defense plans will be impossible to execute.
This latter view was echoed by Sen. Deb Fischer, chair of the Senate Strategic Forces subcommittee, who noted that “for Iron Dome to work, DoD must retain access to the Spectrum bands.” Similarly, Sen. Tom Cotton, chair of the Senate Intelligence committee, stated that “the potential auction of certain spectrum bands could have serious implications for our ability to collect intelligence on key adversaries.”
Notably, a recent exchange between Senator Mike Rounds and Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe noted the implications for intelligence collection during open testimony before Congress:
JOHN RATCLIFFE: “a public auction at certain levels would have an impact on our ability to deliver an accurate intelligence picture…. we can talk about the specific reasons about why in a classified setting that would cause, um, a diminishment of our ability to deliver a good threat picture to the commander in chief.
MIKE ROUNDS:
And in some cases, life-or-death consequences as well?
JOHN RATCLIFFE:
Absolutely.
In short, while the United States government should auction significant parts of the spectrum to ensure the long-term competitiveness of America’s tech industry, the 3.1 to 3.45 GHz and the 7 to 8 GHz bands should be fenced off from the public auction, so as to ensure that Golden Dome can be built and America’s intelligence agencies can stay ahead of their competitors in China and Russia.
Robert Peters is a Senior Research Fellow for Strategic Deterrence in The Heritage Foundation’s Allison Center for National Security.
This article was originally published by RealClearDefense and made available via RealClearWire.
