Tactical communications rarely fail because the waveform is wrong on paper; they fail because the environment is hostile, the RF plan changes by the hour, and the platform cannot afford to be “RF precious”. Designing wireless tactical solutions that survive electronic warfare (EW), mobility, low probability of intercept/detection constraints, and coalition interoperability requires a discipline that starts at the antenna and ends with test evidence you can trust.
Across defence programmes we’re seeing three forces converge: (1) rapidly evolving EW informed by real-world conflict lessons, (2) growing reliance on commercial-derived bearers such as private 5G and LEO satellite, and (3) renewed focus on interoperability frameworks that push standardisation without ignoring edge-case realities. This post breaks down the engineering decisions that matter most when you’re optimising links for contested, cluttered, and fast-moving tactical environments.
Why tactical RF is getting harder (and less forgiving)
The electromagnetic spectrum has become a manoeuvre space in its own right. In practical terms, that means your network is competing with friendly emitters, civilian systems, and adversary effects—often in the same band and at the same time. Recent analysis of the Ukraine conflict highlights a clear trend: EW systems and countermeasures are increasingly adaptable, software-defined, and moving towards AI-assisted sense–analyse–respond loops to keep pace with changing conditions. If the threat can reconfigure faster than you can retune, “static resilience” isn’t resilience at all.
At the same time, defence users want more bandwidth at the edge—video, sensor data, collaborative targeting, and distributed C2—without sacrificing emission control (EMCON) or survivability. That drives hybrid architectures: MANET/mesh for local agility, private cellular for capacity and device ecosystem, and SATCOM for reach-back when terrestrial paths are denied.
Design principles for wireless tactical solutions in contested spectrum
There’s a pattern we see repeatedly in programmes that succeed: they treat RF performance, platform constraints, and operational tactics as one system. In contested spectrum, optimisation is rarely about chasing peak throughput; it’s about maintaining mission continuity while the environment changes.
Key principles:
- Graceful degradation over brittle optimisation: maintain a usable control plane and prioritised data paths when the channel collapses.
- Waveform and bearer diversity: not “one radio, one link”, but multiple bearers with intelligent selection (including SATCOM fallbacks).
- RF hygiene by design: filtering, isolation, intermodulation control, and spurious management matter as much as EIRP.
- Interoperability with intent: align to coalition needs (e.g., standardised interfaces/waveforms where appropriate) without ignoring national caveats or platform-specific constraints.
These principles sound straightforward, but they only work when the front-end and antenna system are designed as a deliberate part of the network, not an afterthought bolted onto a modem.
Antenna and RF front-end: the link budget you actually get, not the one you model
In tactical environments, the “RF tax” is paid in awkward places: platform shadowing, rapid orientation changes, foliage and urban canyons, self-interference from co-sited transmitters, and ruggedisation compromises that detune radiators. This is where many otherwise capable systems quietly fail—because the effective antenna pattern and noise figure in the field look nothing like the lab setup.
Optimisation priorities we recommend to defence systems engineers:
- Pattern control and platform integration: understand installed performance (not free-space performance). For vehicular and manpack systems, the ground plane, mounting, and nearby apertures dominate outcomes.
- Front-end linearity and filtering: in dense RF scenes, intermodulation products and blocking are real performance killers. Good filtering and high-linearity LNA/PA design preserve sensitivity and prevent “friendly jamming” from your own emitters.
- Polarisation and diversity: simple diversity schemes can yield outsized resilience in multipath-heavy terrain; they’re often cheaper (in SWaP terms) than brute-force power increases.
- Low detectability trade-offs: LPI/LPD is as much about antenna side-lobes, spectral regrowth, and duty cycle as it is about encryption.
This is where Novocomms Space’s practical RF engineering capability matters: custom antenna design (microwave through mmWave), terminal integration, and access to advanced design and testing facilities (including RF chambers and equipped labs) allow installed performance to be measured, tuned, and evidenced—not merely assumed.
Networking and waveform agility: MANET is necessary, not sufficient
MANET and mesh networks remain a workhorse for tactical edge connectivity because they’re inherently decentralised and tolerant of node movement. But a mesh that “forms” is not the same as a mesh that delivers mission traffic under stress. The hard engineering work is in traffic prioritisation, routing stability, and congestion control when nodes are intermittently connected and adversary activity is forcing constant change.
Two practical tactics improve survivability:
- Policy-driven QoS: make the network behave like a mission system, not a best-effort LAN. Prioritise PTT/voice, blue force tracking, and C2 messages above bulk sensor feeds when capacity collapses.
- Adaptive rate and coding control: link adaptation must be responsive but stable; overreacting to short fades can cause more harm than the fade itself.
Industry insight worth noting: the direction of travel in EW and spectrum dominance is towards faster, more autonomous adaptation—often described as “cognitive EW”. That same logic applies defensively. If your radios and network management can’t sense the spectrum, classify interference, and adjust parameters rapidly, you’ll be outpaced by both threat systems and the sheer dynamism of the modern RF environment.
Hybrid bearers: private 5G, LEO SATCOM, and the new baseline for wireless tactical solutions
We’re now in an era where tactical connectivity is increasingly a hybrid bearer problem. The most robust architectures treat terrestrial, cellular, and satellite links as complementary rather than competing.
Private 5G (and Open RAN) at the tactical edge
Defence adoption of private cellular networks is accelerating, including Open RAN-aligned deployments and rapidly deployable non-public networks. The appeal is obvious: mature device ecosystems, strong security tooling, and high spectral efficiency for local-area capacity. The caution is equally obvious: cellular introduces new dependencies (timing, core functions, orchestration) and new failure modes under EW pressure. The right approach is to treat private 5G as a capacity layer—excellent for local throughput and device interoperability—while maintaining alternate bearers for resilience.
LEO SATCOM and the SATCOM fallback pattern
LEO constellations have changed expectations around latency and availability, making SATCOM a more practical “always there” option for tactical reach-back. But LEO terminals must cope with fast handovers, dynamic pointing (for steered or phased solutions), and stringent SWaP constraints on mobile platforms. This is a strong fit for Novocomms Space capabilities in terminal and antenna development: designing ruggedised SATCOM terminals, optimising RF front-ends for efficiency, and validating performance in controlled test environments before field trials.
5G NTN: standardisation is catching up
3GPP work on Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) continues to mature through Releases 18 and 19, including ongoing objectives across 2024/2025 for IoT-oriented NTN evolution. For defence engineers, the near-term implication is not “everything becomes NTN tomorrow”, but that standards-based pathways for satellite integration into cellular ecosystems are strengthening—reducing bespoke integration burden over time.
Test and assurance: proving performance under EW-like conditions
In tactical programmes, the test plan is part of the design. If you can only demonstrate performance in clean spectrum, you haven’t demonstrated performance. A credible optimisation cycle includes:
- Installed antenna measurements (pattern, efficiency, coupling) on representative platforms.
- Co-site and intermod testing to validate filtering, isolation, and linearity assumptions.
- Channel emulation and mobility scenarios to expose routing instabilities, handover edge cases, and latency spikes.
- Threat-informed interference testing (jamming, adjacent-channel blockers, spoof-like conditions where applicable) to validate graceful degradation behaviours.
Novocomms Space’s state-of-the-art facilities and end-to-end approach—from concept to production—are designed for precisely this sort of evidence-led engineering. It’s the difference between “it should work” and “we’ve measured it working, and we know how it fails”.
Conclusion: engineer for change, not for a single day in the lab
Optimising wireless in tactical environments is ultimately about designing for uncertainty: uncertain spectrum conditions, uncertain mobility, uncertain threat behaviours, and uncertain coalition constraints. The winning architecture is hybrid, the winning RF front-end is clean and linear, and the winning network is policy-driven with the ability to degrade gracefully under pressure.
If you’re developing next-generation wireless tactical solutions—from ruggedised SATCOM terminals to custom antennas and integrated RF systems—Novocomms Space can help you move from requirements to field-proven performance with engineering depth, practical test capability, and production-minded design discipline.
Contact Novocomms Space to discuss your programme requirements and how we can support your RF and satcom development: https://novocomms.space/contact-us/
