5G Tower Designed To Protect Battlefield Communications.

* A Washington, D.C.-based digital infrastructure company has developed new encrypted 5G towers that could boost speed and security for military communications.

The company, Secure Electromagnetic Pulse Resistant Edge, or SEMPRE, launched over the summer. Its flagship product, the SEMPRE tower, could allow the military to securely use 5G to transmit data, said CEO Robert Spalding, a retired Air Force brigadier general.

Though 5G offers speed, reliability and convenience, it has too many weaknesses which adversaries could leverage, Spalding said.

The SEMPRE tower is currently going through electromagnetic pulse testing to be certified by the military as resistant to an EMP attack, he noted. An EMP is an intense burst of energy that can be released by a nuclear weapon detonated high in the atmosphere, or by a geomagnetic disturbance caused by natural phenomena such as solar flares.

Spalding pointed to a 2020 Nashville bombing that froze wireless communications as an example of what could happen if a terrorist managed to target an unprotected cell tower. The SEMPRE system has a "virtualized" core, which means that communications won't go down if one tower is taken out, he said.

"Our tower can continue to function because we have a functional core--the brains of the system--on every tower that we...