Filling TSAT’s Gaps
TSAT promised outstanding bandwidth and the ability to integrate with all of the Pentagon’s weapons systems — but with greater risk and higher cost. The end of the program leaves a gap in the military’s communications capabilities.
One question before the GAO was, could this leading technology be integrated in time versus the Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellites that had 5 percent of the bandwidth of TSAT? "When they cancelled TSAT, they cancelled programs that were heavily reliant on TSAT," says Cristina Chaplain, director of acquisition and sourcing management for the GAO. ... "The question is how fast can AEHF come on line when they need it, as that program has its own problems?"
While inferior to TSAT’s space segment, Lockheed Martin’s AEHF Milstar 3 is intended to provide 10 times the capacity and six times higher data rate transfer than the Milstar 2 satellites. The transition back to existing programs may fill the gaps and shortfalls. "With the cancellation of the TSAT program, TSAT missions such as communications-on-the-move and airborne ISR must be supported within these programs [Wideband Global Satellite (WGS) constellation and the Advanced EHF satellite system], and as appropriate, through commercial leases and/or hosted payloads," says Steve Tatum, a spokesman for Lockheed Martin. "TSAT was originally envisioned to support up to 30 Gbps (gigabits per second) of a additional communications capacity for the U.S. military including a mix of EHF protected, Ka-band AISR and optical services, although the requirement was later reduced to 5 Gbps of EHF protected services, including communications on the move," says Tatum. "AEHF is significantly more capable than Milstar. Two additional AEHF’s will be able to handle 21 percent of a single TSAT satellite," says Bennett. But it remains to be seen if this approach can replace the expected performance of TSAT.
The Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) has been in development since 2004, intended to augment UHF Follow-on (UFO), Fleet Satellite and Leasat spacecraft. "The Navy has a constellation of UHF satellites that is in orbit already, and they are working on a successor program, called MUOS. MUOS will satisfy UHF communications," says Gary Payton, undersecretary of the U.S. Air Force. Lockheed Martin has been slowed by technology setbacks, cost overruns and schedule delays on MUOS, but the launch of the first spacecraft is scheduled for 2010.
Boeing transferred control of WGS-2 satellite to the Air Force in June. WGS satellites are the highest-capacity military communications satellite, offering a major increase in bandwidth for airmen, soldiers, sailors and Marines. The Department of Defense eventually wants to acquire six WGS satellites. Three could take up to 66 percent of the commercial satellite capacity leased by the Pentagon. According to Diana Ball, spokeswoman for Boeing, "There is nothing available to the [Department of Defense] today that provides the kind of secure ISR and communications-on-the-move connectivity that TSAT would have provided. In the area of ISR, the military has historically relied primarily on commercial Ku-band satellite communications. With the fielding of the WGS satellites, much of this ISR traffic will be transitioning over to military satellite communications. However, the proliferation of UAVs, the need for even higher data rates, and the need for communications links that can operate in the presence of interference will drive the need for TSAT-like capabilities," she says.
"The six-satellite constellation of WGS has the capability to perform some of that (global operations in a secure and survivable communication bubble) mission," says Bennett. "WGS was designed in 2002 and was considered revolutionary in its capabilities. Each WGS satellite has the capability to provide 20 percent of the bandwidth of a single TSAT satellite. ... WGS can fill some of the void, but again WGS has only 20 percent of the bandwidth that a TSAT was designed to handle and none of the protection for the waveform or the satellite. With WGS-2 and WGS-3 coming on line, plus a greater utilization of commercial satellite communications, most of the risks have been mitigated."
The three systems will help replace some of the lost capability, and the military will use those system and some of the technology already developed for TSAT to meet demand, says Payton. How can we capitalize on that piece part investment and the work we did to mature those technologies. ... What we are doing is going back to the warfighters predominantly represented by our Strategic Command in Omaha and the Air Force Space Command in Colorado. We will go to the warfighter and have them quantify which new capability they want first and at what priority should we field next. Then we will figure out what will fit on the AEHF and WGS satellites. It could be a standalone, single mission satellite, but we do have as our charter to capitalize on those subsystems technologies that we proved over the last four years," says Bennett.
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