Via Satellite archive photo

Decision making must occur at the speed of conflict, and commercial space leaders are pursuing initiatives to push data forward from centralized nodes to the tactical edge.

In the past, the tactical edge has been constrained by limited bandwidth and disconnected systems, industry leaders explained during SATShow Week on March 25. Availability of multiple Low-Earth Orbit (LEO) constellations has largely eliminated bandwidth constraints. Now, the challenge has moved toward alignment and standardization across fragmented commercial and defense data architectures.

According to Mike Moran, director of U.S. government business at Amazon Leo for Government, the challenge on future battlefields will not be bandwidth. “The challenge, really, is integration,” he said. “It’ll be how we really integrate the systems together as information sensors, C2 nodes, vector nodes, leveraging a well-integrated communications architecture.”

Amazon Leo has adopted standard network protocols, Moran noted, effectively extending the AWS cloud into space. The AWS backbone is already being used by multiple providers to run virtualized satcom functions, including digital modems and virtual waveforms that previous required dedicated hardware.

As a concept, the tactical edge typically describes “anywhere a decision needs to be made at the speed of conflict,” said Patrick Markus, vice president and general manager at Hughes Defense and Government. “That can be anything from an individual or even from an autonomous agent to anywhere in the world.”

Transforming that from concept to capability is the aim of a recent Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) contract awarded to Hughes to develop an intelligent space data network integrating Department of Defense (DoD), allied and commercial satellite communication networks.

Simon Swift, director of digital technologies at ETL Systems, described the size, weight and power (SWaP) tradeoffs at the edge, describing a situation tactical users often face on the battlefield. “They’ve got choice when they carry their communications equipment: Do I carry bullets, food or communications?”

Swift recalled a discussion with an allied commander who said he was responsible for supporting 75 different modems, warning, “What we’ve got to be very, very careful of is stove-piped, single-point architectures.” He noted that advancements in interoperability standards, such as Digital IF Interoperability (DIFI) and Waveform Architecture for Virtualized Ecosystems (WAVE), are enabling software-defined platforms that can support multiple architectures on a single hardware platform. ETL demonstrated this virtualization concept at SATShow running a high-speed satellite modem on a standard laptop.

Enabling seamless connectivity across disparate or hybrid networks underlies several major DoD and U.S. Space Force initiatives, such as the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), the Space Data Network (SDN), and the Hybrid Space Architecture (HSA).

While the hybrid architecture is often described as inherently resilient through proliferation and redundancy, Moran cautioned, “The devil’s in the details. … The fact that it’s many architectures together doesn’t make it resilient by its nature.” He continued that Amazon Leo is advocating for the integration of systems within a shared architecture to provide flexibility at the edge.

The integration challenges have now started to feed into acquisitions, according to Markus. He noted Hughes’ discussions with the DoD revealing significant interest in direct-to-device solutions. Specifically, DoD is exploring commercially-based standards and products to rapidly deploy services “without having to acquire yet another terminal or device.”

Similarly, Markus noted that DoD is pressing industry on how to “cost-effectively acquire service across multiple constellation service providers.” Markus continued, “That is still very much an unsolved problem.”

Swift underscored that defense forces are seeking commercial efficiency, while also maintaining sovereign control of assets or networks. “People see the need for the equipment that they’re purchasing to be as commercial as possible, whilst being as military as necessary,” he said.

Moran described a trend in government customers moving away from vendor-locked solutions to prioritize interoperability across architectures.

“You don’t want to have a customer have to pick an A or a B,” he said. “That’s one of the worst situations we can put our customer in: Guess which thing is going to be attacked while you’re out there on the field.” Amazon has been integrating with third parties to enable multi-band connectivity via a modem device or other means, to support multiple options or pathways in a contested communication environment.

Industry leaders emphasized that the goal of advanced networking, virtualization and interoperability is to push information processing as close to the edge as possible, to give decision-makers an edge in time-critical actions.

Looking ahead five years, Moran sees these advancements changing the concept of operations. “It will be a whole different way of global engagement that is going to challenge how we think about contested environments and how we sustain that information advantage at the edge,” he said.