Marlan Macklin is a two-decade Department of Defense civilian official with vast technological and international experience. As deputy principal director for FutureG, he travels the globe advocating and educating about how terrestrial networks like 5G and its successors are an essential glue that holds modernized communications together for the U.S. military and its allies.
Macklin’s next stop on his world tour is the Potomac Officers Club’s 2025 5G Summit, where he’ll deliver the morning keynote address. This highly informative Feb. 27 event, sponsored by telecom heavy hitters like Ericsson, Nokia and Oceus, will foster dialogue between the public and private sector about how to best implement 5G and FutureG to aid the American mission. Register now!
Let’s dig into Macklin’s fascinating background and preview what he’ll be bringing to the discussion.
Who Is Marlan Macklin?
After graduating from the esteemed South Carolina military college The Citadel and receiving a master’s degree from Texas A&M University – Texarkana under a U.S. Army Materiel Command Fellowship, Macklin entered the DOD in 2004 and has been an enabler of the U.S. armed forces ever since.
Domestic Roles
Macklin began as a program analyst and, a bit later, a manpower analyst for the Communications-Electronics Command within the U.S. Army’s Deputy Chief of Staff for Operations and Plans. As you can see, communications tech has been a constant in his work.
The DOD lifer subsequently held positions in the Army’s Program Executive Office, Command, Control, and Communication Tactical, a.k.a. PEO C3T, before transitioning into internationally focused work for the department.
International Scope
Macklin spent seven years working under the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Defense Exports and Cooperation, first concentrating on acquisition, technology, logistics and production, and then assuming the roles of regional desk officer, first for the Middle East and subsequently for the Asia-Pacific. For the former, he was responsible for a portfolio worth more than $7 billion and he directed the first transfer of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or THAAD, missile defense system. The Asia-Pacific job situated him with a budget almost double his previous post and involved interface with Japan, South Korea, India, Taiwan and Malaysia.
After a stint on the Secretary of Defense’s Covid-19 Task Force in 2020, Macklin was appointed chief of the Communications and Electronics Division of the U.S. Mission to NATO. He was stationed in Brussels, Belgium and represented the U.S. in conversation and transactions with 30 allies and global collaborators.
5G & FutureG Office
In November 2023, Macklin came into his current role as deputy principal director for FutureG, where he operates under the auspices of the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. He and his team are charged with supporting the implementation of cutting-edge comms networks across the various DOD components. They tap into the private sector to identify the most innovative services available to create the customized, highly secure systems that warfighters need.
The best place to start a conversation with Macklin and his office about how your company can get involved in these fast-paced, high-reward endeavors is the Potomac Officers Club’s 2025 5G Summit. It will be hosted on Feb. 27 at the Hyatt Regency Tysons Corner Center in Virginia and tickets are going fast — claim yours now.
5G/FutureG Office’s Activities & Challenges
Macklin and Principal Director Dr. Thomas Rondeau are working tirelessly to both identify what comms capabilities the U.S. military needs and to educate the components about the tech itself. In June 2024, their office invested $1.8 million in the Naval Postgraduate School to provide education and training about 5G and next-generation networks. The initiative is titled Active-Duty Open-Source Development, or ADOSD, and is seen as crucial for the future active-duty warfighters who will almost certainly need to know how to design, establish and run 5G and beyond in contested environments.
Training like this is especially important in light of what’s going on with U.S competitors like China, who in the last few months announced they have built and are prepared to deploy “the world’s first mobile 5G base station,” according to a Hong Kong newspaper.
The new apparatus is said to be able to facilitate “high-speed, low-latency and extremely secure and reliable data exchange services to at least 10,000 users within a 3km (1.8 mile) radius.
Even when PLA troops are advancing at 80km/h (50mph) in complex terrains, such as mountains or cities, and are subjected to electromagnetic interference, the system can still maintain an uninterrupted total throughput of 10 gigabits per second and a latency of less than 15 milliseconds.”
The 2025 5G Summit
Join Macklin and a host of distinguished guests from across government and industry to work together on building U.S. capabilities that could rival that which China and other near-peer adversaries have devised. The 5G Summit is fast-approaching; don’t miss it!
