As the military enters a “do more with less” environment in terms of its budget, the commercial satellite communications sector finds itself in a potentially valuable position.
As inevitable budget cuts have become the key factor in developing U.S. military communications strategies, the Pentagon has been searching for ways to improve the performance of its network infrastructure at a lower cost without sacrificing the geographic reach of its operations. The ability of the satellite communications sector to meet new technological and performance requirements without sacrificing bandwidth puts the sector in an advantageous position following Congress’ approval of the U.S. Department of Defense’s Joint Space Communications Layer Plan for improving communications through space. “This Joint Space Communications Layer recognized that there are certain exquisite communications capabilities, which were developed and owned by the U.S. military, that should be designed and transmitted over commercial satellites,” says Rebecca Cowen-Hirsch, president of Inmarsat Government Services. “Capabilities such as highly protected nuclear and command-and-control communications were acknowledged as suitable for the satellite platform. Overall, the document showed receptiveness to the idea of making greater use of commercial satellite capacity and communications architecture as part of the military’s future budget planning,” she says.
The U.S. National Security Space Strategy, which serves as the military segment of President Barack Obama’s National Space Policy released in February, set the plan in motion by establishing a foundation for military communications network developments. Aerospace Industries Association CEO Marion Blakey says that while the plan re-energized military and commercial satellite strategies from a macroeconomics approach, it still lacked a microeconomic view from the ground for the end user. “At the time, there was a serious risk that compatibility between military communications equipment and commercial satellites would not have been incorporated as quickly as they needed to be. The more user equipment that must be upgraded later, the less efficient the military’s new communications architecture will be. That was simply not an option in the new budget environment.”
The military began its integration of commercial capacity to complement the Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) constellation since the launch of WGS-1 in 2007. The constellation, which provides wideband communications to ships, soldiers and manned and unmanned aircraft users, has help cover the gap between ever-increasing bandwidth demands and available capacity. WGS’ role has increased significantly in the post-Transformational Satellite program (TSAT) world, as highly protected, jam-resistant communications do not provide enough throughput for modern military communication requirements and more and more encrypted communications continue to be sent across its channels.
WGS, however, is not a long-term safety net, as acknowledged in the Defense Department’s own projections that the constellation will not be able to fulfill the military’s communications demand on its own. To meet requirements while cutting costs and allowing some breathing room for future budgets, the Pentagon supplemented WGS and its legacy Defense Satellite Communications System by buying commercial C-, Ku- and X-band capacity on an ad hoc basis. “The current budget profile simply did not have sufficient room to buy the number of WGS satellites originally intended to meet the full requirement for wideband communications,” says U.S. Army Col. Patrick Rayermann, director of the Communications Functional Integration Office for the National Security Space Office. “You had to go by history, where satellite acquisition programs were not responsive enough for the needs of the warfighter and the ratio of military satcom capability provided by commercial satellites continued to increase well beyond 80 percent. Now we do have an opportunity to complement WGS, and the underlying questions are starting to come in over whether or not more WGS satellites are necessary. How will the military plan and program for essential mission capabilities, and what will be combination of military and commercial capability? You can answer the big questions by answering the ones for the end user first. Satellite-receiving terminal programs, for example, must be aligned to offer flexible and adaptive use of available satellites to personnel on the ground. We now have to make some tough decisions about which programs to continue and how to adjust others to best leverage commercial satcom,” he says.
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