Verizon announced Dec. 12 that its 5G Ultra Wideband service is now live at Newport News Shipbuilding (NNS), a division of Huntington Ingalls Industries (HII) in Newport News, Virginia.
HII is America’s largest military shipbuilding company, and according to Verizon, it turned to the wireless service provider to find out how 5G could enhance its shipbuilding process as part of a digital transformation.
“We are excited to partner with Verizon on our digital journey and be one of the first complex manufacturing businesses in the U.S. to have 5G on-site,” said Bharat Amin, executive vice president and CIO of Huntington Ingalls. “Adding this capability to our infrastructure will allow our workforce to have the right information, at the right time and at the right location to perform their jobs.”
Verizon said with 5G, NNS will be better equipped to meet network connectivity demands and will test new ways its engineers can use augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) to support everything from architectural design to employee training.
NNS recently modernized by moving from pen and paper designs to tablets and allowing smartphones to be used on-premise. While the changes brought NNS up-to-date, it also led to the need for increased bandwidth and for network reliability and security. Verizon said its network virtualization will lead to a dramatic reduction in service deployment times allowing for quick security updates. Meanwhile, 5G’s massive volume capacity, high throughput, and low latency will enable things like autonomous robotics, enhance machine learning, and AR/VR solutions to improve the overall speed and quality needed to deliver warships.
Verizon said NNS plans to test how 5G can drive manufacturing efficiencies that will transform business operations with increased automation, advanced robotics, 3D holographic design, and real-time analytics.
“5G will be a game-changer when our engineers can put on a pair of AR goggles connected to 5G and map out 3D drawings or video chat directly with those employees working inside a ship in real-time,” said Brian Fields, vice president of Business Transformation and CIO at Newport News Shipbuilding. “Using 5G to connect our shipyard ecosystem and improving the productivity of our employees who are designing and building the nation’s warships will truly be transformational.”
