Small satellites are primed to have a bigger role in military satellite communications. That was the key takeaway from the “Milspace in the 21st Century: SmallSats and Disaggregated Space Architectures” panel at SATELLITE 2017 on Monday. Col. Shahnaz Punjani, Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) office director of the Kirtland Air Force Base in New Mexico, said she “was very excited about what lies ahead with small satellites.”
She spoke in depth about the goals behind the Air Force’s Space Enterprise Vision (SEV). “We are looking at the cross range of communications and capabilities. In terms of smaller satellites, we will move to small satellites with three to five year timelines. We are looking at ways to provide capabilities in a much faster time.”
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Peter Wagner, CTO at Spaceflight Industries/BlackSky Global, spoke on the past, present and future of small satellites. He said the future could see “the rise of the cloud in space; we will start to leverage the power of small satellites. If we move into this cloud environment in space, it will fundamentally change our environment.”
Dale Hayden, senior researcher at the U.S. Air Force’s Air University, said: “Space dominance, if it ever existed, it is not in our future. Nations on the terror watch list are developing a space capability.” He believes small satellites could play a key role in improving the depth of space defenses.
Scott Scheimraf, executive vice president of government programs at Iridium Communications, said: “Commercial systems are being used more and more to complement military systems. We have seen a significant shift from the military satellite end user about how they view commercial.” VS
