Military Supplement: Letter From The Editor

The military satellite communications landscape has seen some significant events in 2009, none bigger than the formal cancellation of the Transformational Satellite Communications System program. The program was intended to provide thousands of military users with wideband, highly mobile, beyond line-of-sight, protected communications to support network-centric operations for the future battlefield. While next-generation military satellite systems may be seen as imperative, and even vital, the cancellation of TSAT showed that governments are prepared to scale down their ambitions.

One of the themes of this military supplement is how governments are looking for more creative solutions in terms of military space. The fact is, while we may be in a cost-cutting era, bandwidth demand is only going up. Serving warfighters in theater is still of paramount importance, but governments, which have spent billions bailing out banks and shoring up economies, are starting to curtail spending. At this time, commercial satellite operators can play more of a role than ever before. Governments are seeing strong possibilities to meet the bandwidth demands of their military forces by partnering with commercial operators to meet some of these demands. Solutions such as hosted payloads now seem more attractive to governments which want advanced capabilities and save money.

Conflicts continue around the globe, and warfighters will continue to rely on satellite technology. While economies may be suffering, governments still have a duty to support their soldiers in hostile territories, and this supplement takes an in-depth look at the military communications landscape after TSAT as well as how relationships between the commercial satellite industry and governments are evolving.

The dynamics in 2009 are changing, and we are moving into an era where governments are getting ever more creative with how to provide these capabilities. It will be interesting to see just how creative they become.