DOD Uncertain that Smallsats can Handle Big Missions

Dr. David Hardy, associate deputy under secretary, U.S. Air Force (Space), Office of the Under Secretary of the Air Force. Photo: U.S. Air Force

[Via Satellite 10-21-2016] The U.S. government is still waiting to close the business case on widespread use of small satellites and hosted payloads, U.S. Air Force (USAF) Assistant Deputy Under-Secretary David Hardy said during a keynote speech at the Oct. 20 Hosted Payload and Smallsat Summit in Washington, D.C. The USAF has requested a $5.5 billion budget for space investment in 2017, and while Hardy noted the enormous progress industry has made in the smallsat space within the last 10 years — particularly when it comes to reducing the cost of entry into space — very little of the proposed budget will go toward this technology until the Department of Defense (DOD) can be convinced they can fulfill the missions necessary for U.S. defense.

“When it comes to small satellites, the answer [for what their progress means for DOD] is still uncertain,” said Hardy. “Yes, it is true there have been tremendous capabilities in being able to make the satellite bus smaller and make the sensors smaller, however, this has been accompanied with the increase in requirements we need from our space

Hardy’s remarks come days after another Department of Defense (DOD) official, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy Doug Loverro mentioned small satellites as a way to boost resiliency in space. Hardy defended DOD’s apprehension to make use of smallsats as an issue that has much to do much with their current capability to provide the same services as larger, geosynchronous satellites.

“On the DOD’s side the issue has always been packing in sufficient capability to close the cost-versus-capability case. For many applications we have in the military, power and aperture — or power aperture — are the coin of the realm, and it is hard for small satellites, oftentimes, to meet the sufficient capability to argue that it is the cost-effective, militarily important way to meet the requirement,” he said. Traditionally, the USAF and DOD have trended toward larger and larger satellites as adding capabilities to a single platform has proven to be the most cost-effective way for the U.S. government to scale up, particularly given that the cost of launch has historically been more expensive than it currently is.

“This crab-walked us, over time, into building ever-larger satellites. That is combined with the fact that the space industry is naturally conservative. We invented satellites and moved into space driven by a defense imperative,” said Hardy. “So, what drove us to this tension to always wanting to meet the need but also being conservative — we were worried about the thing being broken when it got up there — and we still retain a pretty risk-averse approach with which we build satellites.”

With small satellite subsystems rapidly evolving, however, and miniaturization making it possible to squeeze more capability into a smallsat while reducing Size, Weight and Power (SWAP), the U.S. government is keeping a “close eye” on how they can use the technology in the future to more cheaply carry out defense imperatives. The U.S. Army is already mulling an experimental LEO network as a way to use smallsats, for example. Hardy points to disaggregating a satellite capability, or distributing one satellite’s mission over several smaller satellites, as a possible way to boost resiliency. A study conducted more than a decade ago by the DOD showed the technology was not yet able to provide the level of resiliency necessary through disaggregation, however.

“Fifteen years ago we said: ‘okay, let’s see if we can disaggregate the radar by having a distributed radar on it.’ It ends up pretty hard and it doesn’t come out obvious that a disaggregated radar constellation, where you have fractioned the aperture, is either cheaper or simpler than a monolithic system,” said Hardy.

He also points to growing security concerns when it comes to spacecraft. Hardy cited unclassified reports that China has run a series of tests determining an approach to developing a wide range of capabilities to both kinetically and non-kinetically disable U.S. space capabilities.

“Historically, space was a domain in which our adversaries could not attack our assets or deny them … that is, if not a vanished paradigm, certainly a rapidly vanishing paradigm. We have to prepare for space as a domain like every other domain in which we conduct military operations,” Hardy said.

If the growing use of smallsats continues to take off, however, it could help pave the way to a more diverse overall capability to meet the DOD’s own needs. This is in combination with the growing viability of contracting hosted payloads for future DOD and USAF missions as a means of lower cost of entry into space.

“The [Geostationary Earth Orbit] GEO environment has become increasingly more competitive,” said Hardy. “It is sufficiently competitive that it makes it attractive to the large geosynchronous satellite providers to look at flying hosted payloads as an alternative revenue stream to support their primary commercial. So, there is greater interest in the commercial sphere to work with the DOD for opportunities for hosted payloads.”

There are still cultural hurdles in contracting hosted payloads on commercial satellites, however, which are much to do with security. “We in the DOD space community like to have control over our own assets. We are most comfortable when we own and run our assets,” said Hardy.

For now, Hardy says the U.S. government will continue engaging in conversations with industry as to how both smallsats and hosted payloads can offer a more diverse use of spacecraft to eventually increase the security of space assets.

“The promise of this increasing capacity at GEO and this proliferation of small satellites in LEO, we think has great potential. It gives us more options, quite frankly, on the DOD side for procuring some level of primary or back-up capability either through multiple sources or through multiple paths. And if I have multiple sources, multiple paths would be distributed over countries; this intrinsically complicates the calculus of an adversary when he wants to try to deny us those capabilities in conflict,” Hardy concluded.