The name change, effective immediately, comes after SES Government Solutions merged with the recently acquired DRS Global Enterprise Solutions (DRS GES). According to the company, the SES Space & Defense name reflects the organization’s new positioning and expanded offering serving the needs of the U.S. government and military customers.

Over the past four months, SES Space & Defense saw the appointment of its new leadership team, as well as the integration of capabilities that reflect the newly combined organization and differentiated value proposition. The company is focused on building, managing, and supporting the most advanced satellite network solutions for the U.S. government and Department of Defense (DoD). SES Space & Defense has been restructured to serve its customers across two integral markets – space and defense – by creating two business units, Space Initiatives and Defense Networks, to provide best-in-class satellite network solutions.

The Space Initiatives unit targets fleet-centric projects leveraging SES’s global multi-orbit satellite fleet, infrastructure, and assets. The Defense Networks unit is centered on multi-operator managed services and end-to-end mission-critical communications.

“This is a major milestone for us, and more importantly for our U.S. DoD customers,” said SES Space & Defense President and CEO David Fields. “In August we consolidated two best-in-class organizations focused on the U.S. government satellite communications needs, and we remain fully committed to providing innovative world-class space solutions to our most tactical customers. With SES Space & Defense as our new name, we would like our strategic vision and focus to come through brightly.”

SES Space & Defense’s ICT Portal
In addition to the company’s name change, SES Space & Defense has also announced their new Common Operational Picture (COP) capability, the Information & Communications Technology (ICT) Portal.

The ICT Portal is a modular web-based NetOps capability providing end-to-end situational awareness in a consumable single-pane-of-glass user interface. The ICT Portal uses the same holistic and vendor agnostic approach as the SES Space & Defense ICT Ecosystem – providing customers with a comprehensive and flexible monitoring and reporting solution. Accessible anywhere in the world, the technology agnostic capability is customizable based on mission and customer operational requirements.

The consolidated network visibility provides the transparency necessary to rapidly identify and diagnose issues across complex networks, including terrestrial and space assets, so networks and applications can be fully optimized to increase performance. In addition, the ICT Portal allows all SATCOM assets to be viewed as one comprehensive satellite and network architecture, providing customers with access to innovative solutions and making a more resilient satellite architecture a reality.

The ICT Portal is secure by design and incorporates the latest security and data processing technologies, ensuring mission assurance for government and military users.

“Today’s military and government users are more network-enabled than ever before, and our ICT Portal supports this through increased visibility and control over their network,” said SES Space & Defense President and CEO David Fields. “The ICT Portal will be showcased at the SIA DoD COMSATCOM Workshop, enabling our most tactical customers to see how performance, network transparency and assurance, makes it a critical capability for successful missions.”

To learn more about how solutions like the ICT Portal can transform how the military monitors network performance, click HERE.

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Most recently, the U.S. Army announced its integrated ground terminal, Phoenix E-Model, would serve Expeditionary Signal Battalion – Enhanced (ESB-E) formations with the likelihood of expanding operations from traditional Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) satellites to leveraging commercial Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) constellations. In this framework, SES Space and Defense, in close cooperation with Lite Coms, carried out extensive work to update the legacy US Army Phoenix Terminal to be MEO capable (AN/TSC-156(E) for the U.S. Army. The resultant Lite Sat 2.2A terminal delivers 50Mbs on a Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) GEO network and up to 600×600 Mbps on SES’s O3b MEO system.

Leveraging MEO satellite technologies provides the modern warfighter the resiliency, high- bandwidth, and low-latency required for mission assurance in contested environments against advanced adversaries.

“MEO satellites are unique in their capabilities and SES operates the world’s only commercial MEO satellite constellation,” said President and CEO of SES Space and Defense, Brigadier General Pete Hoene, USAF (retired). “Early next year, SES will launch its second-generation MEO system, O3b mPOWER, which promises to meet and exceed the connectivity requirements of today’s warfighting technologies – delivering flexible and secure fiber-like connectivity anywhere the mission requires.”

In alignment with the Army’s stance on MDO, multi-orbit SATCOM solutions that leverage MEO significantly extend the Army’s ability to securely transport data between the command post, soldiers-on-the-move, as well as multiple sensors in support of Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2). As the Army increasingly relies on data and network-enabled platforms for deployed warfighters, having interoperable communication systems that are flexible and assured is essential to capturing a common operating picture (COP) for multi-domain operations.

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Three of those storms – Irma, Harvey and Maria – caused massive damage to the United States.

In addition to the hurricanes that devastated the US gulf coast and territories, severe wild fires have also ravaged the Pacific Northwest, including parts of Oregon and other surrounding states, in August and September, causing significant property damage.

With the potential (and likelihood) for serious and frequent natural disasters in the future, it’s essential to start looking at innovative ways that the government and military can better leverage commercial technologies to enable timely responses to natural disasters.  This includes evaluating and assessing ways connectivity can quickly be restored to areas impacted in disaster response scenarios.

A wide array of tools and resources are available to first responders, everything from rapidly deployable satellite communications systems to unmanned aerial systems (UAS) that can be used for surveillance.

UAS are capable of prolonged flight over impacted areas and can transmit high resolution photographs and sensor data back to decision makers, who can use it to make operational decisions that might enable aid to get to the right place in the most expeditious manner while ensuring the safety of everyone involved.  COMSATCOM solutions can deliver the necessary connectivity for piloting these aircraft, as well as the low-latency connectivity necessary for delivering the intelligence they gather back to those that need it.

The use of these platforms could start to increase thanks in large part to something going on within the Air Force – which in the process of upgrading its UAS fleet from the MQ-1 UAS to the MQ-9. This could lead to MQ-1 resources trickling down to organizations responsible for disaster relief. In fact, this idea was recently floated during a UAS panel at the AFA Conference in September 2017.

When asked about the current plans for the MQ-1, 432nd Wing Commander, Col. Julian Cheater, said, “We’re still recapitalizing a lot of the equipment from the MQ-1s for use on the MQ-9s. [Following that] there will be a considerable amount of the MQ-1s and there’s no real plan at this point. Is there a non-military use for these? For example – a hurricane? Can Homeland Security fly these and use them for those reasons…?”
But even with these tools in place, something has to bring them together and provide the connectivity necessary to power them.

The role of satellite in disaster response
Aside from washing away critical infrastructure, hurricanes and wild fires can also wash away vulnerable terrestrial cellular and network infrastructure, as well. In these environments, satellite and commercial satellite communications services can be the key to keeping a humanitarian response initiative connected and effective. Today’s commercial satellite solutions can deliver high-throughput, fiber-like connections to practically any spot on Earth, providing the connectivity necessary to continually track social media activity of survivors and deliver real-time intelligence to first responders. This is all possible even without existing terrestrial networks, making satellite ideal for places where infrastructure has been compromised.

This hurricane and wildfire season has been downright destructive for the U.S. and the future promises to hold even more destruction, thanks to increasingly frequent and increasingly powerful disasters. Luckily, a new generation of military, civilian and commercial technologies could play a role in making our disaster response and emergency preparedness even better. But without satellite, these network connected and network enabled platforms may not be available for disaster response efforts when we need them.

To learn more about the role that COMSATCOM can play in disaster response and emergency preparedness, click on the resources below:

High Throughput Satellites for U.S. Government Applications

Operational Trial Of A Satellite Communication System For New Jersey’s First Responders

White Paper: Saving Lives And Livelihoods By Satellite

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