Lockheed Martin announced that it successfully detected and tracked unmanned aerial vehicles using Verizon's commercial 5G network during a demonstration conducted in the Miami area in July 2026. The test was completed without making any modifications to the telecommunications provider's deployed radio hardware. According to the company, the flight demonstration presents a viable path toward wide-area airspace monitoring by leveraging already-installed commercial cellular infrastructure.
Rather than installing traditional radar systems or dedicated radio frequency sensors, Lockheed Martin's NetSense platform operates by analyzing subtle signal disturbances naturally occurring across the cellular network. The demonstration brought together several technology partners, including ODC, which supplied AI-native radio access network software, and NVIDIA, which provided its AI Aerial platform to process radio frequency measurements at the network edge. Keysight Technologies supplied simulation and testing tools, while Lockheed Martin's wholly owned subsidiary Astris AI and proprietary algorithms predicted drone flight trajectories and generated real-time alerts.
Anil Guntupali, Senior Vice President of Technology and Product Development at Verizon, stated that applying artificial intelligence to signal measurement data traversing the network effectively turns existing connectivity infrastructure into an intelligent sensing system. Lockheed Martin highlighted that sensing drones through unmodified cellular networks avoids the heavy capital expenditures required to upgrade telecom equipment, offering airspace situational awareness prior to the formal adoption of 6G integrated sensing and communication standards.
Lockheed Martin plans to market the NetSense capability as a security operations subscription service. The company has scheduled pilot deployments for the second half of 2026 and early 2027, followed by general commercial availability later in 2027. However, Lockheed Martin did not disclose operational parameters from the Miami test, such as detection range, cell site density, drone sizes, flight altitudes, or false alarm metrics.
