During one session at the event, SES Government Solutions’ (SES GS) Director of BD Engineering, Technologies and Solutions, Ram Rao, had the opportunity to address conference attendees on some of the next-generation solutions that are enabling greater visibility into militaries’ technology networks, and discuss how these emerging capabilities can advance U.S. Department of Defense (DoD missions and deliver critical, decision-making information and data at speed.

Network visibility at speed
In the past, the U.S. military has not had a capability to render big-picture visibility of all DoD information, communications, and technology networks. For example, if one branch of the DoD had a network of 500 end-to-end connections, there has never been a solution or means to have a high level, holistic view of all connections in one window for review. And this is a challenge that the U.S. military is looking to remedy.

There is immense value in being able to automatically drill down to individual network connections and dissect each part of an end-to-end connection. If military networks employed such automated capabilities, it would eliminate the laborious and time-consuming legwork of manually monitoring every network connection.

Instead of dedicating valuable manhours that manual monitoring requires, the DoD can employ automated solutions that constantly scan, examine, and provide feedback on all connections. These new technologies can also provide views that scale down to the individual satellite, teleport, and connection, as well as scale up to high-level, holistic vantage points of the entire network. Processes that used to take days of laborious network scanning and monitoring has now evolved into automated near real-time – if not real-time – feedback and visibility of a network and all the connections it houses.

Besting the adversary through real-time monitoring
Aside from the benefits that DoD network operators could gain from an optimized visibility solution, it’s critical that the speed at which mission goals are delivered always remains a priority. According to Rao, “When we listen to all the high-ranking officials, five-star generals – all the way down to the hands-on people – in the military, the one thing they’re talking about is ‘speed of delivery’ and real-time processing, because every second matters when we are trying to defend ourselves or offend our enemies.”

Rao went on to explain that being the first to make decisions in a time of defensive or offensive crises is of the utmost importance to the DoD. The only way high-ranking officials can be first to strike or defend depends on the data, intelligence, and communications they exchange between decisionmakers at headquarters and the warfighters on the battlefield.

“It’s about making the decision first, and who is first,” said Rao. “We don’t want to make decisions blindly. We want to hit intelligently. So, how do you intelligently do it? If every link and connection is up and running, the data is flowing from the end-users to the headquarters, where all our decisionmakers are sitting. Through automated networking monitoring solutions that ensure assured communications and connectivity, they will have real-time data available to them and can quickly make decisions.”

Network visibility and JADC2
Network performance monitoring solutions that grant wider visibility into military networks will most certainly support the DoD’s overarching Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) project. According to the Congressional Research Service, JADC2 is a “concept to connect sensors from all of the military services—Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, Navy, and Space Force—into a single network.” DoD efforts that support network singularity, like JADC2, can give complete, high-level visibility into a conglomeration of various network capabilities that enable decisionmakers to advance missions.

Overarching network performance solutions that can drill down to individual views and subviews of a singular network connection is game-changing for a concept like JADC2. Allowing DoD decisionmakers to gain visibility into thousands of different network data points in a streamlined and consolidated interface can ensure that the U.S. military is always one step ahead of the adversary.

The soon-to-come ICT Portal
According to Rao, SES GS is hard at work on a soon-to-be-released solution that will deliver those network performance monitoring capabilities to the U.S. military. SES GS’ Information, Communications, and Technologies (ICT) Portal will do just that.

Rao describes the ICT Portal as a spokesperson for DoD networks. “The ICT Portal will be a window that will enable visibility into the network’s capabilities, how it is built, and how it is operating,” said Rao. “This will deliver complete resiliency to military networks, and support the DoD’s JADC2 initiative.”

“The platform will provide visibility on a single pane of glass to government end-users, and give a holistic view into networks from an end-to-end connectivity point of view,” said Rao.

To learn about the role other emerging technologies, such as AI/ML, will play in the future of MILSATCOM, click HERE.

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Across the board, we’re continuing to see that militaries are in the process of reevaluating and changing how they conduct “business as usual” when it comes to space. Much of that has to do with the fact that space – itself – has changed as a domain.

Space is no longer a benign domain thanks to the reemergence on near-peer adversaries capable of challenging and denying space resources and capabilities in theater. Simultaneously, the space and satellite domain have been revolutionized by the introduction of new commercial players and massive innovation from industry partners. This innovation has come in the form of a new generation of satellites that are being launched and coming on-line in new orbits, the emergence of commercial space launch and even the advancement of on-orbit refueling and servicing.

Together, these trends have led to global militaries – including the United States military – needing to rethink how they gain access to space capabilities, how they acquire space resources and even how they fundamentally architect and build their space infrastructure. This has led to some drastic decisions and changes across governments, as well as some head scratching. All of which was on display at Global MilSatCom.

Let’s take a look at the news coming out of the show, and talk about the impact it’ll have on the industry:

Ground segment getting more attention in military space programs, U.S. leaders say
Historically, government customers have met their satellite requirements in a piecemeal fashion – leasing bandwidth on the spot market to fill gaps in coverage and availability, using a mix of MilSatCom and ComSatCom resources and purchasing ground terminals for specific requirements.

Unfortunately, this piecemeal approach has led to interoperability issues and challenges with the military’s ground infrastructure.

As this article discusses, there were multiple discussions about ground infrastructure at Global MilSatCom about the interoperability challenges and problems with aging ground terminals facing today’s military. One of the proposed solutions was a more holistic approach to satellite acquisition – taking both the space and ground segment into consideration when evaluating and implementing new satellite resources and infrastructure.

However, industry could have another solution in the form of satellite managed services. In this instance, the industry partner is hired as a service provider – effectively on the hook for all of the hardware and services needed to deliver a capability to the end customer. This means that everything from the ground terminal to the bandwidth needed would be included in the managed service. It’s a system that has become increasingly popular in the satellite industry and that could begin to make its way more into the military and government space.

That being said, it’s clear that ground terminals are and will continue to be a challenge and area of focus for global militaries, and the approach to acquiring ground terminals will most likely change. But that’s not the only change in acquisition that was a topic at this week’s show.

Air Force Space Command prepares to take over procurement of satellite communications
This is a pretty big one. The Air Force Space Command is poised and ready to take on a big responsibility that was originally owned by the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) – the acquisition of commercial satellite services for the entire Department of Defense (DoD).

The impetus for this change has a lot to do with concerns about the speed of acquisitions and if operator’s needs are being met. The feeling is that this change in acquisition authority will help make necessary ComSatCom services more readily available to the military at the speed of war.

Another change that could be precipitated by this interesting shift in acquisition authority is a move away from Lowest Price Technically Acceptable (LPTA) contracting – which bought satellite service based on its price – making it very much like a commodity. With Air Force Space Command at the helm, there is an expected shift towards more innovative acquisition models and a movement to award contracts by more criteria than just cost.

And while this change is certainly a positive step for the government, it wasn’t the only change that was floated to the acquisition process during Global MilSatCom…

Air Force satellite communications buyers would like to see commercial vendors team up into a consortium.
While the above shift is on the government side, there was also a proposed change to the industry side of the acquisition equation.

Due to concerns about vendor lock-in and terminal interoperability, militaries have been reticent to embrace the “satellite as a managed service” model that we discussed above. In an attempt to make it more palatable to the government, some speakers at Global MilSatCom came up with a somewhat interesting proposal – team up.

Tom Becht, the interim director of the military satellite communications directorate at the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center, called for industry leaders to team up in a consortium that could offer satellite services across companies and constellations to the military as a unit.

We’re not sure how open satellite companies would be towards that kind of tag team, but it certainly is a new and innovative approach to satellite acquisitions…

The post News out of Global MilSatCom shows shifts in military satellite strategies appeared first on SES Space and Defense.

Unfortunately, the Government Satellite Report wasn’t able to attend. However, we did have the opportunity to sit around the table with three members of the SES Space and Defense team that were in attendance at this year’s event.

Those experts included:

• Tim Deaver, Corporate Vice President of Development at SES Space and Defense
• Jeff Rowlison, Vice President of Government Affairs at SES Space and Defense
• Will Tong, Vice President of Sales at SES Space and Defense

During our time together, we discussed the major trends and topics that dominated discussion at this year’s show, we touched on the major challenges that are concerning the military in the space domain, and talked about the role that COMSATCOM is going to play in MILSATCOM into the future.

It’s rare that we get some many savvy satellite minds to ourselves, in one place and at one time, so we used the opportunity to record our discussion for a very special episode of the Government Satellite Report Radio podcast series.

Here is what these gentlemen had to say:

According to our guests, some of the hottest topics at Global MILSATCOM 2017 included HTS and MEO satellite constellations. For additional information of these solutions, download the following resources:

• High Throughput on the High Seas
• White Paper: Satellite Evolution Sparks a Service Revolution
• High Throughput Satellites for U.S. Government Applications
• White Paper On O3b “Fiber Like” Satellite Communications for U.S. Government Applications

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