If recent events in Eastern Europe have shown us anything, it’s that there really was cause for concern among military and satellite industry thought leaders. Satellite networks and communications have been an early target for adversaries as a way to deny mission-critical communications and capabilities. And with modern militaries relying heavily on network and software-enabled platforms, those satellite networks need to be resilient, because they’re now mission-critical.

One of the best ways to make satellite communications more assured is to enable the military to quickly and seamlessly move their signals to overcome the adversary’s attempts to deny them. If signals can be switched between commercial satellite networks and military satellite networks, the adversary’s targeting calculus becomes more difficult, and the military can more rapidly restore communications that were degraded or denied.

But even better would be the ability to seamlessly move signals from MILSATCOM assets in geostationary orbit (GEO) to commercial satellites in any orbit – including GEO, medium earth orbit (MEO), and low earth orbit (LEO). Not only would this make the targeting of satellite networks nearly impossible for the adversary, but it would also give the military access to an ecosystem of thousands of satellites with which to operate.

Interoperability between terminals and terrestrial networks has long been the stumbling block to enabling this kind of seamless switching between satellites. But recent tests being conducted for the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) have illustrated that the obstacle of interoperability could soon be eliminated.

In December of last year, SES Space and Defense announced that it worked in close cooperation with Lite Coms to update the legacy U.S. Army Phoenix Terminal to be MEO capable for the U.S. Army. The upgraded terminal could operate with traditional commercial and military GEO satellites, as well as with commercial Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) constellations.

To learn more about this test and what it means for the U.S. Army, we sat down with the President and CEO of Lite Coms, Robert Jacobson.

Government Satellite Report (GSR): Can you tell our readers a bit about Lite Coms and its solutions? What solutions does the company design and manufacture? Who are they intended for?

Robert Jacobson: Lite Coms LLC is a three-year-old company in Victor, NY, comprised of a team of engineers, operations professionals, and programs professionals that have worked together for more than 20 years, building and delivering more than 11,000 VSAT terminals to defense customers in the U.S. and around the globe.

We create the most feature-rich and highest-performing products in the market. Our parabolic Very Small Aperture Terminals (VSAT) and Electronically Steerable Array (ESA) flat panel terminals are the most capable products available to the U.S. military and its coalition partners.

In the past three years, we have introduced more than a dozen products – each one more capable and more advanced than anything our competitors have on the market.  Military customers seek us out because of the performance of our product, our dedication to customer support, and our high attention to detail.

GSR: Why are terminals that are rugged, light, and easy to use essential for today’s military?

Robert Jacobson: The increase in advance technology on the battlefield can be taxing on an operator. And we don’t want to add to that stress. That’s why we believe the focus of the soldier, sailor, airman, or marine should not be on how to make their terminal function.

We are committed to using the latest in technology and industry standards to make their job easier through software, automation, miniaturization, and advanced packaging technologies for survivability. And we work to balance that with low size, weight, and power requirements (SWaP) to minimize the impact on the warfighter.

“SES and Lite Coms conducted testing in support of the U.S. Army…with the Phoenix E terminal delivering communications via the SES O3b MEO satellite constellation…The results were excellent. In fact, we became the de facto primary means of communications when other legacy hardware and new LEO-only systems were having difficulties.” – Robert Jacobson

As advanced technologies increasingly make their way into the battlefield and become critical to virtually every military mission, it’s essential that terminals can be operated by untrained users, and that they can be stored and transported in a rucksack instead of multiple transit cases.

GSR: Lite Comms recently worked with SES to make its Phoenix E terminal work with MEO. Why is MEO satellite connectivity desirable to the military? What advanced capabilities can MEO enable?

Robert Jacobson: We believe the Phoenix E MEO certification is a major milestone for the satellite communications community. This is the first time there is a WGS-certified and MEO-certified terminal available to the DOD. This also marks the first time that a low PIM, multi-carrier X-band terminal is available to them, as well.

The data rates offered through the MEO enhancement are truly game-changing. The Phoenix E on WGS has been tested to deliver data rates of 50 Mbps. The O3B network from SES will support data rates of up to 600Mbps on the same Phoenix E terminal.

GSR: Can the Phoenix terminals work with both GEO and MEO? How can these terminals enable multi-domain operations?

Robert Jacobson: We are striving to ensure all Lite Coms terminals are “Constellation Agnostic.” We believe that allowing the Expeditionary Signal Battalion-Enhanced to have single terminal – like Phoenix E – that can be used with constellations in both MEO and GEO brings a whole new paradigm of mission planning and options to our warfighter.

“We believe the Phoenix E MEO certification is a major milestone…This is the first time there is a WGS-certified and MEO-certified terminal available to the DOD. This also marks the first time that a low PIM, multi-carrier X-band terminal is available to them, as well.” – Robert Jacobson

Depending on the mission, they can use standard WGS on X-band or military Ka-band, or commercial Ku-band, traditional C-band, or the game-changing MEO O3b from SES.

GSR: Why would the military be interested in accessing satellite communications from different orbits utilizing the same terminals and hardware? What benefits could this deliver?

Robert Jacobson: Tailoring your communications to meet your mission requirements is of critical importance to the mission planners. Having the ability to expand your data throughput from 50Mbps to 600Mbps using the same organic products is of great interest to the military leadership.

Also, cost savings in hardware and in transport is staggering when you get data rates like this through a terminal typically capable of 50Mbps. The days of needing to bring 3.9 meter or larger terminals will be a thing of the past. We will drastically reduce the amount of equipment being transported via aircraft with this technology.

GSR: SES Space and Defense recently announced that they were doing some multiple orbit testing for the U.S. Army. How is Lite Coms involved in these tests? What do the tests entail, and what is the Army looking to determine with these tests?

Robert Jacobson: Last fall, SES and Lite Coms conducted testing in support of the U.S. Army. The testing took place over a number of months, with the Phoenix E terminal delivering communications via the SES O3b MEO satellite constellation for Army users in Fort Lewis and Yuma. The results were excellent.  We tracked the MEO satellites consistently and had no failures or breaks in communication for the duration of the exercise.

“The increase in advanced technology on the battlefield can be taxing on an operator. And we don’t want to add to that stress.” – Robert Jacobson

In fact, we became the de facto primary means of communications when other legacy hardware and new LEO-only systems were having difficulties. Our new Phoenix E terminals delivered resilient, high-throughput communications, and proved that MEO upgrades to the Phoenix are a worthwhile investment for the U.S. Army.

Lite Coms is very excited to continue working with SES and the U.S. Department of Defense to field constellation agnostic solutions for our users now and into the future.

To learn more about the recent testing conducted by SES Space and Defense and Lite Coms on behalf of the U.S. Army, click HERE.

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But Hydra could play a role in yet another trend that we’re seeing in the military that puts high importance on network transparency – the establishment of an integrated military satellite architecture that incorporates both COMSATCOM and MILSATCOM assets.

To understand the importance of an integrated architecture and why Hydra is such an essential component, we first have to explore why the military is so adamant about integrating their purpose-built satellites with commercial services.

Bringing it all together
Most of the military’s communications that need to be sent over satellite networks travel via their purpose-built WGS satellite constellation. But there are a limited number of these satellites, they’re all located in Geostationary orbit, and the amount of bandwidth and capacity on the network is limited. In today’s increasingly network-enabled and software-dependent military, limited bandwidth and capacity can be a problem – practically everything on the battlefield will soon require connectivity.

To increase satellite capacity, the military can either purchase new satellites that they will launch and manage, or they can utilize commercial satellite services. One of these things – commercial satellite – is available immediately. The other – building more WGS satellites – could take a half-decade or more to get built and operational.

“If an adversary denies a satellite…having the ability to manage and control the network to send traffic around that network segment – either to other available military satellites or commercial satellites – could be the difference between having comms and not having comms.” – Amit Katti

But there’s more to commercial satellite than just immediate access. Commercial satellite solutions bring other benefits to the table. As Frank Backes, the senior vice president for Federal Space at Kratos, explained in a recent Government Satellite Report interview:

“…an integrated architecture allows the military to leverage the investments the commercial sector has made in innovative technologies. Advanced commercial technologies have added benefits, including increased resilience to interference, jamming, or environmental effects, far more rapid resource allocation, improved situational awareness, and increased bandwidth utilization efficiencies.”

Backes also noted that the WGS constellation faces concerns other than a lack of capacity and bandwidth. The military also has to worry about jamming and kinetic attacks from its largest adversaries – nation-states that have already demonstrated their capability to attack satellites in orbit. By integrating commercial and military satellite assets into one, integrated architecture, the military can seamlessly recover from one of their own satellites being denied.

“…there are not many satellites in the constellation,” Backes explained, “and some consider them easy targets to peer adversaries. Operating as a seamless network enterprise gives the military more options allowing flexibility, scalability, and resiliency.”

Integrating commercial and military satellite assets into one, comprehensive satellite and network architecture gives the military access to more innovative solutions much more quickly, while increasing their satellite capacity, and improving resiliency should WGS satellites be jammed, attacked, or otherwise denied. With all of those benefits, why haven’t they made an integrated satellite architecture the standard already?

Transparency and control
If MILSATCOM resources, such as the satellites in the WGS constellation, are denied, an integrated COMSATCOM and MILSATCOM architecture would enable the military to quickly and seamlessly transition to commercial satellites to fill their communications requirements. While that sounds easy enough, when you stop and think about everything that is required for that handoff to happen, it becomes both incredibly complex and technologically difficult.

“Transparency and control are two challenges that have traditionally stood in the way of an integrated MILSATCOM and COMSATCOM architecture. Hydra is an essential tool for giving the military the transparency and control it needs to better incorporate COMSATCOM into its operations and missions in the future.”

For starters, the military would need to know exactly where the problem resides. They would need to know that a WGS satellite is being denied, or the amount of capacity they need for the mission is available – and the problem doesn’t reside somewhere else within the network. Once they determine what the problem is, they would then need the situational awareness to know which COMSATCOM resources were available in that theater, secure capacity on those resources, and seamlessly transition all of their traffic and workloads over to the COMSATCOM network.

There are a lot of moving parts in that process. And almost all of them require transparency – both into their own, military networks and the networks of commercial partners. Also necessary in that process is a certain level of command and control to identify available commercial assets, acquire them, and begin operating with them. These are all things that have held up the integrated MILSATCOM and COMSATCOM architecture in the past. But they’re challenges that industry partners are rapidly working to overcome.

Hydra is one of the important tools and solutions that can help deliver the transparency, command, and control that the military needs to make the integrated satellite architecture a reality.

Hydra was developed in-house by SES Space and Defense specifically for its government partners. It aggregates network information from across a user’s network – including both terrestrial and space assets – and allows the user to build custom dashboards that put all necessary network information on a single pane of glass. This means that government and military users could use Hydra to build a dashboard specifically for a mission, and use that dashboard to quickly and effectively identify problems. Should the problem reside in the space domain, Hydra then gives them the command and management tools necessary to fill their requirements with COMSATCOM solutions.

“Integrating commercial and military satellite assets into one, comprehensive satellite and network architecture gives the military access to more innovative solutions much more quickly, while increasing their satellite capacity, and improving resiliency should WGS satellites be jammed, attacked, or otherwise denied.”

According to Amit Katti, a Principal Engineer at SES Space and Defense, “If an adversary denies a satellite – either disables it with a kinetic attack or jams its signal – having the ability to manage and control the network to send traffic around that network segment – either to other available military satellites or commercial satellites – could be the difference between having comms and not having comms. Platforms like Hydra are going to give the military the management and control data that they need to make that dream scenario a reality.”

Transparency and control are two challenges that have traditionally stood in the way of an integrated MILSATCOM and COMSATCOM architecture. Hydra is an essential tool for giving the military the transparency and control it needs to better incorporate COMSATCOM into its operations and missions in the future. The platform is cracking open the door to an integrated COMSATCOM and MILSATCOM architecture, which is imperative for the network and software-enabled future of our military.

“Hydra allows them to request, monitor, and orchestrate commercial satellite services within their contract boundaries,” added Katti. “If a military communications satellite is taken offline, being able to orchestrate commercial satellite capacity to fill that void is imperative to meeting an operation’s comms requirements without interruption.”

To learn more about the new Hydra common operational picture platform, click HERE.

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To say that the future of the U.S. military is more software-enabled, and more network-enabled than ever before would be a massive understatement. Everything that the military is developing and piloting for use in battle today needs connectivity.

Just look at the Army’s IVAS program, which is working to deliver an advanced augmented reality (AR) solution to the warfighter on the battlefield – putting important information, situational awareness capabilities, and other tools directly in their field of vision via a HoloLens headset.

According to Steve Kitay, the Senior Director of Azure Space at Microsoft, the IVAS headset will be augmented by Azure cloud services, and function to, “[keep] soldiers safer and [make] them more effective…[by] delivering enhanced situational awareness, enabling information sharing, and decision making for a variety of scenarios.”

And while this is certainly an exciting and revolutionary new tool in the warfighter’s kit, it’s only possible with connectivity in theater.

If everything that the warfighter relies on in theater is going to become network-enabled, then connectivity needs to be assured. Training a soldier to rely on a tool that only works when connected would be setting them up for failure if the network that supports the tool can be degraded or denied. Resilient, assured networks are no longer “nice to have,” they’re mission-critical.

While that looks good on paper, assured networks are easier to discuss – or write about – than they are to implement in the real world.

Complexity and a lack of transparency impact uptime
The terrestrial networks that provide the backbone of our high-bandwidth connectivity at home are incredibly stable and reliable, with SLAs and uptimes that ensure that connectivity is almost always available. Unfortunately, those terrestrial networks, themselves, are often unavailable where the military and government operates.

In foreign countries and isolated geographic locations, terrestrial networks may not exist at all. If that infrastructure does exist, it could be unreliable, or it could be untrusted. But that’s not just a problem that the military faces abroad. There are large swaths of our own country with no high-bandwidth terrestrial networks due to cost, geography, or other reasons.

In these places, satellite connectivity is essential and necessary to deliver the high-bandwidth, high-throughput, low-latency connectivity necessary for the government and military to operate their next-generation, network-enabled platforms, devices, and vehicles.

“…Hydra includes an inventory management system that integrates shared and dedicated devices, circuits, and the space segment into the same contextual environment…[allowing users] to schedule and monitor the entire end-to-end network in a single, integrated pane of glass, diagnose problems more rapidly, and fix problems before they take applications, services, and capabilities offline.” – Amit Katti

But adding satellite communications to the network infrastructure for government agencies and the military effectively increases the complexity of the networks – giving them a network architecture that incorporates assets on Earth, and in space. Much like with a modern car that’s more of a computer than an automobile, this increased complexity can also mean that there are more things that can fail or more things that can go wrong.

Worse, the military is utilizing a number of disparate terrestrial networks, disparate terrestrial hardware, and utilizing space assets and networks that include their own military assets, as well as commercial assets. This creates a lack of transparency and visibility into everything that’s happening across the network – a problem that the military is actively working to fix by embracing a joint operating environment across all of the DoD’s branches and organizations.

For the government and military to ensure connectivity and have assured networks, they need the ability to see the entire network – both terrestrial assets and space assets – on a single pane of glass. If a single, unified view of the network and the individual devices connected to it were available, the government and military would be able to diagnose problems more rapidly, and fix problems before they take applications, services, and capabilities offline.

Luckily, such a solution now exists.

Increasing transparency and uptime with Hydra
Earlier this week, commercial satellite operator, SES Space and Defense launched a new common operational picture (COP) platform called Hydra that the company claims, “…provides end-to-end situational awareness in a single unified operational network platform.”

Hydra was built in-house by SES Space and Defense specifically for their government and military customers. The solution integrates network data from multiple different sources – including operational data from the company’s satellite networks – and enables users to display it on a single dashboard or pane of glass. This could effectively enable the government and military the opportunity to view everything happening on and within their networks in one place – increasing transparency and allowing them to identify and remediate problems with the network more quickly.

“In addition to providing basic M&C data, Hydra includes an inventory management system that integrates shared and dedicated devices, circuits, and the space segment into the same contextual environment,“ explained Amit Katti, a Principal Engineer at SES Space and Defense. “This ability to incorporate and visualize the entire network allows the customer to schedule and monitor the entire end-to-end network in a single, integrated pane of glass, diagnose problems more rapidly, and fix problems before they take applications, services, and capabilities offline.”

COP platforms, such as Hydra, could be revolutionary in enabling the military to better monitor their networks – both on Earth and in space – and identify problems before they bring down networks. With network-enabled and software-enabled devices, applications, and platforms making their way into every government and military mission and operation, the timing couldn’t be better.

Networks aren’t “nice to have” at the tactical edge anymore. They’re essential. COP platforms like Hydra are ensuring that these networks are always on and available to the warfighter. This way, the next-generation, high-tech tools that our government and military personnel rely on are there when and where they need them – even in the most remote and austere of environments.

In our next article on the Government Satellite Report, we’ll look at the military’s push for an integrated commercial and military satellite architecture, and how COP platforms like Hydra could help make that a reality.

To learn more about the new Hydra common operational picture platform, click HERE.

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The new Common Operational Picture (COP) platform, Hydra, built by SES Space and Defense to exclusively serve the U.S. Government and military is a modular web-based monitoring and control system that provides end-to-end situational awareness in a single unified operational network platform.

Built, managed, and operated in-house by SES Space and Defense, Hydra collects, normalizes, and organizes data from different sources based on the mission or customer and distributes the information to the appropriate dashboard providing an interactive user interface of consumable data in a single pane.

Built on a cloud-native and micro-services architecture, Hydra is secure by design and incorporates the latest security and data processing technologies, ensuring mission assurance for government and military users.

The foundation of Hydra is the SES Government Terrestrial Network (GTN), which was built to synchronize operations across major global teleports, points of presence, and U.S. Government datacenters. The network integrates with Hydra, providing complete visibility and management capabilities to the customer and SES Space and Defense’s Network Operations Center (NOC) to optimize end-to-end system performance.

“Hydra is the convergence of tactical, operational, and strategic enterprise data in a single pane-of-glass view,” said President and CEO of SES Space and Defense, Brigadier General Pete Hoene, USAF (retired). “Having information in real-time can be the difference between mission success and mission failure. SES Space and Defense has identified the need for a tool that compiles and transforms open-source data in a customizable dashboard to help manage situations rapidly and allow in-real time informed decision making.”

Utilizing the new Hydra platform, SES Space and Defense customers across the government and military can get increased transparency and visibility into their network – including both terrestrial and space assets. This makes identifying and resolving problems with the network easier and more efficient, increasing network performance and assurance at a time when network-enabled platforms and applications are increasingly mission-critical for the government. The system will also make it easier for military users to stand-up new satellite resources and reroute network traffic to commercial resources, making the military’s vision of a more resilient and redundant satellite architecture that utilizes both commercial and military assets a possibility.

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As Gen. Goldfein explained, his vision for future multi-domain operations, “…isn’t just about the domains…nor is it just about executing operations across these domains, we already do that now. Where we’re going is to use dominance in one domain or many, blending a few capabilities or many, to produce multiple dilemmas for our adversaries in a way that will overwhelm them. This is where we’re going.”

On display in the video presentation was a fictional military situation being responded to by the military that Gen. Goldfein claimed we’d need in 2030 – and the force that he and his contemporaries are prepared to create for our nation. And, from my seat in the National Harbor’s Gaylord resort, it was certainly impressive.

The vignette illustrated an integrated and collaborative approach to multi-domain operations that showcased how sea, air, land, space and cyber operations – working collaboratively – could be pressed into service to quickly respond to escalating aggressions from an adversary and almost immediately repel a fictional invasion of an imaginary allied nation.

And while the vignette and presentation was impressive and aspirational, it was also frustrating for some in the room. That’s because, while it incorporated coalition forces in practically every domain, it was obviously missing something that the Air Force has claimed it would increasingly rely upon in the future – commercial satellites.

Why commercial satellite matters
While there are many things that commercial satellite services could deliver to the military, there are two specific benefits that I really consider the most important – innovation and resiliency. And both of those things could have been used by the fictional force in Gen. Goldfein’s vignette.

Air Force senior leadership has admitted on numerous occasions that the commercial satellite industry is the clear leader in space today. It’s the leader because it moves quickly and must satiate the world’s enormous appetite for satellite capacity.

Commercial satellite providers are constantly building and launching new satellites to replace aging spacecraft and to fill the capacity requirements of their customers. With the nearly constant and rapid pace of satellite development, construction and launch, the commercial satellite industry gets frequent opportunities to incorporate the latest and greatest technology advancements into their satellites.

Compare this to how the military has traditionally operated. The military has been building and launching similar WGS satellites for a decade. And the time it takes the military to design, develop, build and launch a new satellite means that, by the time they launch a new satellite, the technologies on it are no longer cutting edge.

When it comes to resiliency, commercial satellite providers have been long fighting against the misconception that their services are in some way less resilient and secure than military satellites. And there is a good reason why that misconception exists, there are demonstrated benefits to operating in the X band frequency, as satellite expert, Phil Harlow, recently articulated in another article on the Government Satellite Report:

“With only ten [X band] WGS satellites in orbit, there is less chance of adjacent satellite interference. This means that more power can be put down from each satellite without fear of interfering with other, adjacent satellites (or being interfered with by other satellites). This higher power results in a stronger signal on the ground that further overcomes attenuation from environmental factors, increases throughputs and improves link reliability.”

However, the small number of WGS satellites creates a resiliency problem itself. If a near-peer adversary is looking to deny the military’s satellite services – which have long been a strategic edge for our military – they only have ten potential satellites to target.

This lack of diversity makes it easier for enemies to target and deny satellite capabilities, which is why Kimberly Morris, satellite communications operations division head at the U.S. Naval Network Warfare Command recently called for an increase in satellite options when she said, “We need diversity – we need a wide range of diversity,” at this summer’s Milsatcom USA Conference.

By utilizing commercial satellites in conjunction with military satellites, the ecosystem of potential satellites that could be carrying military signals increases from ten to more than 150. This not only can help disrupt an adversary’s targeting calculus, but also provide back-ups should military satellites be denied. As Morris said at the same event, “You go after our [military-owned] systems, I’ve got something else that I can get to. Historically, with a lot of the weapon systems that are brought to bear in the modern age, it’s not the primary system that has been a hero, it’s the secondary system, because the enemy puts so much effort into taking out that primary system.”

With the potential to increase resiliency and bring new, innovative solutions to bear, it’s clear that commercial satellite needs to be a part of military plans in the future. So why wasn’t it in the vignette? Especially since it could have been so beneficial?

What could have been – and what will be
During Gen. Goldfein’s vignette, the two coalition military satellites being relied upon for communications in every other domain were jammed by adversary space assets. The response of the coalition forces in the vignette were to bomb targets deep in enemy territory and relocate military spacecraft – which is an extremely time-consuming and risky response.

How would that have played out if this futuristic force was utilizing a combined commercial and military satellite architecture?

First, the adversary would have struggled mightily to target the correct satellites. Today’s commercial satellite industry operates innovative new satellites in more orbits than just the traditional geostationary orbit. With more than 150 satellites in multiple different orbits – including GEO, MEO and LEO – that could have been transmitting military communications in theater, the adversary would have struggled mightily to identify which satellite to target for jamming or even kinetic attacks.

Should the adversary jammed or denied the correct satellites, the coalition forces in the vignette would have had an even easier, far less risky response should they have been using an integrated commercial and military satellite architecture. They simply could have relocated a digitally-steered beam from a different commercial satellite – possibly even one in a different orbit – to deliver high-throughput, low-latency connectivity to the battlefield.

No jets would have needed to be scrambled, no military satellites would have needed to expend precious fuel to be repositioned, and no pilots’ lives would have needed to be risked.

This is why Ken Peterman, the President of Government Systems at Viasat recently told attendees at a panel discussion during SATELLITE 2019 that, “…within government circles, support continues to build for a DoD, hybrid, multi-network adaptive enterprise so that the DoD has the improved resiliency, improved mobility and improved flexibility to take full advantage of commercial innovation.”

So, where do we stand with that “hybrid, multi-network adaptive enterprise,” or integrated commercial and military satellite architecture? I asked Gen. John Raymond, the Commander of United States Space Command, during a media roundtable at the Air, Space and Cyber Conference, and he assured us that it’s still on the table – even if it’s not in vignettes.

When asked about the potential to utilize satellites of different sizes and in different orbits, General Raymond responded, “I think what we’ll see in the future is a more hybrid architecture which would provide us with more resiliency.“ And adding commercial satellite to the military’s network architecture and infrastructure was also a priority for Gen. Raymond moving forward.

When asked about the timing and roadmap towards this combined architecture, the General responded, “[The Air Force] had several meetings with the commercial industry to partner with them on a vision going forward. I expect to publish a vision document towards that end in the coming months. We’re here to work with industry and I think that the relationships that we have and that were provided to us by the National Defense Authorization Act will provide us great advantage.”

Both the military and the satellite industry see the potential that an integrated commercial and military satellite architecture could have for our nation’s multi-domain operations in the future. If we’re going to truly win the battle for space and utilize satellites as part of a military response that will, “produce multiple dilemmas for our adversaries in a way that will overwhelm them,” then commercial satellite needs to be an integral part of the Air Force’s plans now and into the future.

Featured image courtesy of the Air Force Association.

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