With Intelsat buy, SES targets European defense market
SES's American arm, SES Space & Defense, was awarded a five-year "Sustainment Tactical Network (STN) contract" to provide the US Army with satellite communications services.
SES's American arm, SES Space & Defense, was awarded a five-year "Sustainment Tactical Network (STN) contract" to provide the US Army with satellite communications services.
"The ubiquitous user terminal that could interoperate across frequency bands and orbits was a key part of [the Space Force's SATCOM Vision], and to date, no one's been able to deliver it," said Ryan Stevenson, Kymeta's chief scientist.
HSA is aimed at creating a "hack-proof" internet in space comprising commercial and government SATCOM birds to underpin the Defense Department's Combined Joint All Domain Command and Control concept to link sensors and shooters in real time.
Col. Rich Kniseley said the current plan is to set up a new Space Force working capital fund for buying commercial SATCOM, initially worth about $120 million, on Oct. 1.
Meanwhile, the company said it has no intentions of dropping its lawsuit against the federal government over L-band spectrum use.
"I'm very confident that we will have our first CASR contracts by early of next year, targeting space awareness," said Col. Rich Kniseley, who is spearheading the Space Force's effort to create a Commercial Augmented Space Reserve.
The Army is convinced that there are benefits to be had from moving to a SATCOM-as-a-service model, including rapid response to battlefield needs and access to the very latest tech.
"The expectation is that we will bounce between those constellations in the same flight, so we'll move between them. Now, I don't think anybody should be guaranteeing that on flight one," said AFRL's head engineer for Global Lightning Brian Beal. "We're going to improve as we go and get to that, but that is the goal of the program."
The satellites carry a handful of different payloads, including the two US Space Force Enhanced Polar System-Recapitalization jam-resistant communication payloads, an X-band communications payload for Norway's Ministry of Defence, and a Ka-band payload for commercial firm Viasat.
The company, a Google off-shoot, characterizes its Spacetime software as the "digital cartilage and autonomous brain" that can bring to life DoD's JADC2 concept linking sensors and shooters across all domains.
Brig. Gen. Jason Cothern, Space Systems Command deputy, said the service is looking "to incorporate capability-based contracts to include emerging p-LEO services, commercial X-band, space-to-cellular and small maneuverable GEO satellites, trying to stay ahead of the threat and also taking advantage of the commercial capabilities as they arise."
Amazon recently launched the first two prototypes for its Project Kuiper; OneWeb now has all 634 satellites it needs to provide global internet access.
Comtech President and CEO Ken Peterman told Breaking Defense the contract for the Army's Enterprise Digital Intermediate Frequency Multi-Carrier (EDIM) modem paves the way toward helping the Space Force in its struggle to figure out how to integrate ground systems for the myriad military and commercial SATCOM networks used by US forces around the world so as to ensure 24/7 access to needed communications bandwidth.