BETHESDA, Md. - Lockheed Martin and a group of commercial technology partners demonstrated a counter-uncrewed aircraft system (C-UAS) approach that uses existing 5G cellular infrastructure to detect and track drones, potentially expanding low-altitude airspace awareness without deploying a dedicated network of new sensors.

The NetSense "Airspace Awareness-as-a-Service" system was demonstrated in the Miami area in July in collaboration with Verizon, NVIDIA, Keysight Technologies, ODC, and Astris AI, a Lockheed Martin subsidiary. The demonstration combined existing Verizon 5G network spectrum with artificial intelligence (AI), radio-frequency (RF) sensing and Lockheed Martin tracking algorithms to detect and maintain custody of UAS in an urban environment, the companies say.

The approach is significant because it attempts to use communications infrastructure already deployed for another purpose as a distributed sensing resource for C-UAS operations.

Frequencies flying 

Lockheed Martin says NetSense can detect RF disturbances associated with UAS activity, use AI-enabled processing to identify and track aircraft, and provide real-time alerts. The system uses NVIDIA's AI Aerial platform and ODC's AI-native radio access network (RAN) software to process RF information from the 5G network, while Lockheed Martin supplies warning, tracking, and airspace-awareness capabilities. Keysight contributed RF modeling, simulation, emulation and test capabilities to the demonstration.

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The companies say the demonstration did not require changes to existing cellular radio deployments. That could be significant for C-UAS applications at critical infrastructure sites, airports, utilities, stadiums and other locations where dedicated sensor installations can require additional equipment, site preparation and communications infrastructure.

Rather than creating a dedicated sensing network, NetSense is designed to add an AI-enabled sensing capability to an existing communications architecture and connect the resulting tracks and alerts to a customer's security operations.

Integrated Sensing and Communications (ISAC)

The system is also being positioned as a bridge toward future Integrated Sensing and Communications (ISAC) architectures. Lockheed Martin and its partners say NetSense can provide sensing capabilities using current 5G infrastructure while maintaining a development path toward broader deployment across 5G and future 6G networks.

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The relationship to ISAC, however, represents a broader engineering question. Future ISAC systems are expected to integrate communications and sensing functions more directly into wireless network architectures. NetSense instead demonstrates how existing communications infrastructure and associated RF data can be used for sensing without waiting for purpose-built 6G infrastructure.

The architecture also raises questions about the role of AI and accelerated computing in distributed RF sensing. NVIDIA says its AI Aerial and AI-RAN technologies enable RF signal disturbances to be analyzed at the network edge, while Lockheed Martin's algorithms use the resulting information for UAS detection and tracking.

For C-UAS applications, maintaining a track across multiple sensing points could be as important as initial detection. A cellular network potentially provides a geographically distributed infrastructure from which multiple observations can be collected, although the companies have not disclosed detailed performance data from the Miami demonstration, including detection ranges, track accuracy, false-alarm rates or performance against different types of UAS.

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The system's dependence on commercial cellular infrastructure also creates its own engineering considerations. C-UAS operators would need to account for network availability, cybersecurity, RF interference and jamming, and operation during degraded or disrupted communications. The companies have not disclosed how NetSense is designed to operate when portions of the underlying cellular network are unavailable.

Lockheed Martin says NetSense is designed around an open architecture and can incorporate additional sensing, processing and counter-UAS technologies. The company also says the system could scale from individual critical infrastructure sites to mobile command-and-control applications.

The NetSense capability is planned for delivery as a subscription service that interfaces with customer security operations. Pilot deployments are planned for the second half of 2026 and early 2027, with general commercial availability planned for 2027.