Today the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) named Airbase a winner of Project Spectrum Strike Prize Challenge, a competition that sought autonomous spectrum management software. We are immensely proud of that. But the more important story is what this capability changes for the people who fight with these systems.

A soldier who wants to test a new drone or counter-drone system on their installation waits months, sometimes years, for spectrum approval. Last month at Fort Carson, alongside Drone Dominance Gauntlet 2, spectrum managers, regulators and soldiers from the 4th and 25th Infantry Divisions watched that wait time collapse. Airbase’s platform took spectrum requests from initial creation all the way to an approval decision in minutes, in front of the people who normally spend those months doing it by hand. This means orders of magnitude faster fielding, faster testing, and none of the risk that comes from working around the process.

Why this matters

Every system the Army fields depends on spectrum, from radios and drones to radar and electronic warfare systems. Getting authorization to operate a system can take anywhere from months to years, and the current process is manual, sequential, and spread across databases and systems that often don’t talk to each other. Adversaries are fielding cheap drones and multi-band radios faster than our paperwork can keep up, and every time a unit works around the process instead of through it, the risk of blue-on-blue interference goes up.

What the Government is doing

DIU, alongside the DoW, Army, NTIA, FCC, FAA, DHS, and more refused to accept the wait. They set a high bar for a system that’s ready-now, approvals in days or minutes rather than months, zero false negatives on safety-of-flight and GNSS interference, and a live demonstration on an Army installation, not a slide deck.

Then, they put all of the stakeholders in the same room. NTIA, FCC, FAA and DHS evaluated the demonstration alongside DoW CIO, Army Spectrum Management, and soldiers from the 4th Infantry Division and 25th Infantry Division. The people who write the rules, the people who enforce them, and the people who operate under them judged the same demonstration together.

What was demonstrated

At Fort Carson, using real data from Drone Dominance Gauntlet 2, Airbase’s platform carried spectrum requests from creation to decision in a single, seamless workflow.

A spectrum request was generated, validated automatically, checked against the electromagnetic environment, and cleared by the people accountable for it in a fraction of the usual time. The system handled the process, end-to-end, while the spectrum managers and regulators were empowered to focus on the challenging decisions instead of mundane compliance checks. 

What comes next

This is the beginning, not the finish line. DIU designed the Project Spectrum Strike Prize Challenge to move working software from live demonstration to enterprise procurement, using an Other Transaction agreement to scale from demonstration to end-to-end spectrum management. The goal is simple to state and enormous in effect: any unit, fielding any system, anywhere, gets a fast and accurate equipment certification or spectrum authorization.

Picture what that unlocks. Counter-UAS testing that goes live at an installation the week it is needed. New radios and sensors in soldiers’ hands the month they arrive instead of the year after. Commanders who can see the spectrum picture around them and act on it. And a government that can say yes quickly and safely because it finally has the tools to know the answer.

The same bottleneck exists in many places where spectrum is needed: commercial launch, satellite operators, wireless carriers, public safety. What the Army proved at Fort Carson is that it can be fixed without compromising on interference protection, and that the path runs with the regulators, not around them. 

Spectrum is finite. Demand for it is not. The way through is to make access faster, safer and smarter than it has ever been, and last month the Army, DIU and their interagency partners showed what that looks like.

Thank you to DIU, the Army, NTIA, FCC, FAA, DHS, and the soldiers of the 4th and 25th Infantry Divisions for setting the bar. We’re excited to continue to work together. Congratulations to Xtremis as well.

If you manage spectrum, for a unit, an agency, or an operator, reach out on our website. And if you want to help change the way America manages spectrum access, join our team.

About Airbase

Airbase builds modern systems for RF spectrum management, licensing, coordination and intelligence. We help automate the process of spectrum access for government, defense and commercial operators. Airbase is backed by Andreessen Horowitz and Squadra Ventures.