When you consider the mission-critical services that military satellites provide – and the essential capabilities and communications they deliver to – it becomes abundantly clear why this topic dominates so many military space discussions.

Compromising or neutralizing a military satellite now means that Americans have to go without essential communications connectivity, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) data and mission-critical network applications and tools. These type of mission degradations would have immediate and negative impacts on lethality, and on the survivability of American troops.

Defending a Contested Space Domain

It comes as no surprise that defending satellites was once again the hot topic of discussion during a Defense One-organized, “Cocktails and Conversations,” event that was held just steps away from the Walter E. Washington Convention Center during one of the evenings of SATELLITE 2018 – one of the year’s largest satellite-focused conferences.

This event included a number of military satellite decision makers and thought leaders, each with incredible depth of experience and knowledge into the military’s satellite challenges and requirements. Present on the panel were:

• Douglas Loverro: President of Loverro Consulting, LLC and Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy
• Colonel George R. Nagy: Chief of the Space Support to Operations Division at the Pentagon
• Deanna Ryals: Chief of the International Programs Division within The MilSatCom Systems Directorate at the Space and Missile Systems Center, Air Force Space Command
• Dr. Brian Weeden: Director of Program Planning at the Secure World Foundation

The conversation began with basic overviews about DoD satellite strategy and the ongoing wideband analysis of alternatives (AOA) before shifting to the topic of resiliency. As it turns out, resiliency and mission assurance aren’t new issues, which was well illustrated by this anecdote from Dr. Weeden, “I was looking at some documents from the end of the Ford Administration, they were worried about threats to U.S. space systems from a growing adversary counter-space problem and the fact that their systems were not designed to be able to defend themselves or be survivable in the face of an attack.”

That administration ended more than 40 years ago.

No simple solution for satellite resiliency

Although this is clearly an old challenge, there has yet to be a perfect solution implemented across the DoD – most likely because there is no one, simple solution. As Mr. Loverro elaborated, “You can’t just build a bunch of satellites and say you’re resilient. You can’t just go ahead and put armor on your satellite and say you’re resilient. You can’t just go ahead and say just use commercial, or do responsive launch and say you’re resilient.” Instead, he challenged the military to, “…look at your mission, look at your architecture and the tools available and think about what makes it difficult – if not impossible – for someone to take that apart.”

Ultimately, multiple panel participants agreed that it’s going to be a combination of disparate solutions – a “basket of solutions” as Mr.

Weeden referred to it – that can be combined to better protect military satellite infrastructures and architectures. That “basket of solutions” was further defined by Mr. Loverro when he said, “It’s going to be a combination of proliferation, disaggregation, diversity, distribution, protection, proliferation and deception. Those factors can combine for any space capability that we know about to make them resilient, and – quite frankly – it doesn’t cost a lot of money if you combine them correctly.”

Although the panel all agreed that resiliency in satellite networks was of paramount importance for the DoD, they did disagree when it came to identifying exactly which threat was the largest one facing military satellites. Two of the panelists were concerned about cyber attacks and cyber threats impacting military satellites. Mr. Loverro was more concerned about a somewhat less sophisticated, albeit equally effective, threat to satellites – jamming.

According to Mr. Loverro, “Cyber attack against a variety of communications networks is a difficult challenge. But the far simpler thing that Russia can do. That North Korea can do. That Iran can do. That Botswana can do. That some guy in the middle of a field with a TV truck can do…is jamming. Jamming is very hard to protect against, unless you have the right equipment.”

And that’s an area where commercial satellite can help.

Getting down to the jam

When making the decision about which orbit to place their military satellites will take, the DoD chose GEO because fewer satellites could provide coverage for much of the Earth’s surface. Fewer satellites meant less money. But, as Mr. Loverro noted, “What is good for economics isn’t good for the military.”

Jamming a satellite’s signal requires being within the satellite’s beam – or coverage area. This is much easier with GEO satellites, because their coverage areas are so large. By launching military satellites into GEO, the coverage the military wanted came at a lower price tag, but with an increased risk of jamming. As Mr. Loverro explained, “GEO was cheap to launch, but harder to defend.”

But there are commercial solutions that can help protect military communications from jamming.

Today’s commercially-available High Throughput Satellites (HTS) utilize steerable spot beams that provide incredible throughput, but cover smaller areas. Some of these satellites are currently operating in MEO orbits, meaning they combine high throughput with low latency, and are naturally more prolific and harder to jam. By embracing these commercial HTS and MEO satellite constellations, the military can essential get anti-jamming capabilities baked in.

Luckily, the door could be opening for an increased role for commercial partners in the military’s space architecture – making these HTS and MEO constellations more readily available for military users. As part of the wideband satellite AoA, the DoD is exploring new ways to approach the construction of their satellite architecture, and is looking seriously at a more integrated network of commercial and military-owned satellites.

By building a combined architecture that embraces a combination of purpose-built, military-owned satellites and commercial capabilities, the military can better take advantage of the innovative new solutions that commercial providers are bringing to market. Based on statements from Mrs. Ryals, that could very well be in the cards:

“There’s a big push to expand and increase our partnerships for resiliency and national defense – to build capabilities together. I think that expands not just to allied partners, but also commercial partners. With the amount of commercial capability that’s out there and available today, we have to find ways to change the way that we procure SATCOM capabilities. We have to look through the AoA and look at how we’re approaching that balance of military vs commercial. But we recognize that the commercial industry is one of our biggest partners that we have not yet tapped to help us build this architecture and build this infrastructure.”

By tapping this previously under-utilized resource, the military can better protect its satellite capabilities from jamming and ensure that the warfighter never has to go without essential services again.

MEO and HTS constellations are the latest commercial innovations being embraced by the federal government, capable of securely delivering fiber-like bandwidth to practically anywhere on the planet. 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

The post Overcoming the largest threats to military satellites and increasing resiliency appeared first on SES Space and Defense.

However, even with a solid list of speakers and attendees, one of the most interesting and telling quotes I heard at this year’s SATELLITE Conference was spoken by someone that may not have even been in attendance – Tech Sergeant Justin Perran of the United States Air Force.

TSgt Perran is a Joint Tactical Air Controller, a position which requires him to utilize satellite capabilities to ensure that the actions of fixed and rotary wing support aircraft are as precise as possible. As Maj. Gen. David D. Thompson, the Vice Commander of Air Force Space Command, explained, “[TSgt Perran’s] job – in essence – is to be a scheduler. He schedules meetings between our enemies and American firepower. And he does it continuously. He is the most lethal person on a battlefield.”

I can only speculate about TSgt Perran’s whereabouts during SATELLITE 2017 because I never came face-to-face with him, or bumped into him. He wasn’t a keynote speaker or – as far as I can tell – even a panelist during the event. But he was the star of a video package that was aired when Gen. Thompson got up to speak, and what he said in that video perfectly and beautifully encapsulated everything those listening will ever need to know about the importance of satellite to today’s modern warfighter.

Speaking about GPS and satellite capabilities, TSgt Perran said, “No, I don’t want to be in a fair fight. The advantage is that America’s military is so well trained and equipped that even if you took everything away, we’re still better than [our potential adversaries]. But, when you add all of the capabilities that we have, and add all of the technology, and you get me down to that five minute window, that’s absolutely what I’m going to prefer. That’s because we’re going to win that fight and we’re going to win it so fast that you’re not even going to know what happened. All of my guys are going to be safe and you’re not going to send anymore because you know you’re just going to lose them.”

That’s the kind of confidence that Maj. Gen. Thompson is looking to instill in the warfighter, which he refers to as his, “customer.” And that confidence comes from ensuring that space capabilities are there when they’re needed for the soldiers in theater. According to the General, “It’s our job to ensure that those capabilities are there, on time every single time.”

But Maj. Gen. Thompson’s job – and the job of everyone in Air Force Space Command – is only getting harder. Ensuring space capabilities for the warfighter isn’t as easy as it was in the past, when space was an uncontested domain that could be utilized to the advantage of the United States and few others.

Today, the space domain is changing, and that change was very well articulated by Maj. Gen. Thompson, when he said, “Our adversaries have been watching as well and they recognize now what space does for the American way of war – the precision, the lethality and the effectiveness – and they’ve decided that it’s time to take that advantage away from the United States. It’s only recently that it’s become obvious – not just to us but to the rest of the world – that others intend to deny us that capability in the future.”

This shifting and changing threat environment in space is forcing the Air Force and Department of Defense to make changes as well – both to how they operate in space, and how they construct their satellite architecture and infrastructure.

When it comes to operations and the command and control of space assets, the Air Force is fundamentally reevaluating the role of its airmen and examining what their highest priority and highest value tasks should be. In the past, this included the actual management and command of spacecraft in orbit, but there seems to a shift in that mindset.

This shift in responsibility was well illustrated by Maj. Gen. Thompson, when he said the following:

“For years we have been focused on keeping the trains running on time. Our job now is to understand the threat environment and be able to react to it, and – in order to do that in this current environment – we will not get more uniformed or civilian airmen to do that. So, we’re going to increasingly look at the ability to bring commercial and contract operators online to do the routine day-to-day flying and operations for our satellite constellations while we focus on what we are truly commissioned and designed to do, which is fight [adversaries] through a contested environment.”

The other change involves how the military builds its space architecture. The increasingly contested space domain means that operational resiliency is essential to ensure space capabilities aren’t compromised. By distributing and proliferating systems across additional satellites – including those of allied nations and commercial partners – the military can ensure that an attack on any single satellite no longer impacts service delivery.

According to Maj. Gen. Thompson, “A diversity of options that are space based…will also make for more resilient architecture….Increasing the distribution of [systems] in the SATCOM world and the diversity across bands, across capabilities – both military and commercial – will help us increase the resiliency of those systems as well.”

To accomplish this diversity and increase resiliency, the General proposed increased use of COMSATCOM services, as well closer partnerships with the COMSATCOM industry. Maj. Gen. Thompson suggested that the military look to the COMSATCOM industry for innovative ideas and solutions to the military’s problems. He also discussed a consortium of commercial and industry partners that work together, as well as compete, to come up with innovative new satellite technologies and solutions for the military.

According to Maj. Gen. Thompson, the Air Force needs to, “…recognize the commercial capabilities that are out there…also the commercial ideas for how to operate and field systems and deliver capabilities to our customers.”

To learn more about the shifting role of the COMSATCOM in military operations, click the following links: 

• Changing space domain calls for a new approach to MILSATCOM
• Analyzing satellite alternatives for increasing mission assurance
• The evolving role of industry partners in MILSATCOM

The post Avoiding fair fights – Maj. Gen. Thompson discusses future of MILSATCOM at SATELLITE 2017 appeared first on SES Space and Defense.