And while this has been hard on everyone, technology has been there to help somewhat soften the blow.

Netflix, Hulu, HBO Max, Peacock, and every other online video streaming service – with the exception of maybe Quibi – have helped keep people entertained. Zoom, Microsoft Teams, and other online collaboration and video conferencing solutions have helped us see our distant loved-ones face-to-face. They’ve also kept us connected and collaborating with our coworkers. Cloud-based applications and virtual desktops have made remote work both possible and effective. And a combination of delivery services and dedicated essential workers have kept us fed and supplied.

But what would happen if we didn’t have access to these services, tools, and capabilities? It’s an almost unfathomable scenario to consider for many of us that simply take these things – smart devices, online services, and the prevalent bandwidth that enables them – for granted in our everyday lives.

But there is a large population of our fellow Americans that don’t have access to the modern conveniences and capabilities that ubiquitous broadband connectivity and highspeed terrestrial cellular networks have delivered to much of our country. That group includes deployed soldiers – many of which are stationed in places where terrestrial networks are either untrusted or denied. Or, in some extreme cases – such as with Navy personnel stationed on ships-at-sea – those terrestrial networks are simply unavailable.

As Nicole Robinson, the SVP of Global Government at SES, recently explained during a webinar for press and satellite industry experts entitled, “The Government Network Architecture of the Future,” this is creating a serious personnel problem for today’s military.

“New generations of warfighters are growing up with [smart devices]. They have access to social media tools and different ways to connect with friends and loved ones,” She explained. “When they forward deploy, they’re expecting access to those devices and services, but that’s not currently the case.”

And this problem has only gotten worse during the global COVID-19 pandemic since it’s keeping soldiers and sailors deployed and quarantined from their loved ones. As the USO recently explained on their Website:

…because of the COVID-19 pandemic, many Navy ships have been ordered not to come into port, meaning that service members currently aboard these ships have been stuck at sea for months. Some have been at sea for nearly half a year. Of the Navy ships that do come into port, their visit is far from normal. Service members must stay quarantined, away from contact with others, to ensure no exposure and spread of COVID-19 on the ship…”

How can we keep deployed or geographically-isolated soldiers and sailors connected to their loved ones? How can we keep them engaged and entertained at a time when a global pandemic has extended deployments and demanded quarantining? And how can we keep the morale of our warfighters high before it starts to impact retention and future recruitment?

The utilization of satellite solutions for morale, welfare, and recreation (MWR) could provide the answer.

Satellite as a MWR solution
The military has long relied on satellite communications in places where terrestrial networks are unavailable, untrusted, or otherwise denied. The same commercial satellite connectivity that has been relied on for communications in theater can be used for military MWR initiatives to deliver connectivity to soldiers and sailors stuck at-see and overseas.

In fact, with today’s advanced commercial satellite solutions – including high-throughput satellites (HTS) in orbits closer to Earth than Geostationary Orbit (GEO) – such as Lower Earth Orbit (LEO) and Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) – they could deliver even more.

The low-latency, high-throughput capability of HTS satellites in LEO and MEO orbits – including the SES O3b MEO satellite constellation – is capable of delivering fiber-like connectivity to practically anywhere on the planet. That means that the same highspeed, high-bandwidth connection that today’s next generation of warfighters have been raised with and rely on can be delivered to them regardless of where they are on Earth.

This isn’t a revolutionary idea. It’s something that is widely used in private industry. This was well illustrated by Brad Grady, a Principal Analyst at space and satellite industry analyst firm, Northern Sky Research, when he asked, “Why can my family go on a cruise ship and get [an] incredible connection, and then I can go on an [aircraft] carrier and the connection is terrible?”

As the next generation of warfighter enters the military – one that was raised with mobile devices in their pockets and that considers connectivity more than just a convenience – this disparity is quickly becoming a problem. And it’s a problem that is being exacerbated by the global pandemic that has quite literally left American warfighters stranded overseas and at-sea. And it couldn’t be happening at a worse time, when the U.S. military is actively looking to recruit and retain troops as part of larger efforts to increase military readiness.

“A small number of Americans serve in our armed forces and they have growing expectations,” explained Rep. Jackie Speier at a recent House Armed Services Committee subpanel examining military recruitment and retention, “The competition for the limited talent is fierce.”

According to Nicole Robinson, part of the solution could involve putting a piece of home in the pockets of servicemen and women. “The military needs to improve retention for soldiers, sailors, and airmen,” she explained. “Part of that is having access to data – having access to creature comforts when they’re deployed.”

COMSATCOM solutions – especially HTS constellations at LEO and MEO – could make that a reality for the military, both during the ongoing pandemic and well into the future.

Featured image courtesy of Max Lonzanida and the U.S. Navy.

The post Could MWR via satellite help solve military recruitment and retention challenges? appeared first on SES Space and Defense.

But what isn’t as simple is embracing new, disruptive technologies that require a massive change to the organization, its culture, or its way of thinking. The adoption of these technologies and the organizational changes that enable it takes time. It requires buy-in from the highest levels. And it often requires an organization to take risks and doing things that may be uncomfortable.

Cloud adoption was like that – especially within the government and military.

To embrace the cloud, government and military organizations had to answer a difficult question, “Does control only come from ownership?” They had to shake decades of thinking and a deep cultural belief that to truly control and secure something, they needed to own every part of it outright.

For the agencies and organizations that were able to overcome those cultural objections and put aside their need to own everything, there were significant rewards.

The embrace of the cloud-enabled immense scalability, agility, and cost savings. It also opened the door to digital transformation and the advanced technologies that are revolutionizing government. But those benefits came at the cost of making difficult decisions and taking risks – doing things in a way that went against decades of doing business a certain way.

According to Brad Grady, a Principal Analyst at space and satellite industry analyst firm, Northern Sky Research, and the SVP of Global Government at SES, Nicole Robinson, the next logical step in how the government and military embrace satellite communications could require a similar change in culture, approach, and thinking. But – much like with the cloud – if the government and military are able to change “business as usual,” the benefits could be equally immense.

New solutions to meet massive bandwidth appetites
During a recent Webinar for press and industry experts entitled, “The Government Network Architecture of the Future,” Brad and Nicole laid out how the next generation of commercial satellites and satellite capabilities could usher in a new era in connectivity.

During their panel discussion, the two satellite experts explained how embracing commercial capabilities could be the best and most effective way to meet the government’s rapidly-increasing appetite for bandwidth at the edge. What is driving that appetite? According to Brad, it’s a combination of three converging trends – improvements in ISR, increasing communications requirements, and a fundamental change in operations:

“ISR demands are on the rise. There are more sensors on more platforms…within that, each sensor is getting higher and higher resolution. Operations are becoming more real-time, with government and military operators looking to bring collaboration tools and services to the edge. Deployments are also becoming more complex.”

To meet these requirements, government and military leaders need a low-latency, high-throughput satellite solution capable of delivering fiber-like connectivity to the edge – places where terrestrial networks are unavailable, denied, or untrusted.  And those low-latency and high throughput satellite capabilities are not currently available through the military’s own communications satellites.

“There is no broadband, non-GEO government system that is operating today,” Brad explained. “There is no multi-orbit government architecture that offers multi-gigabyte [connectivity] out there today.”

They are available through commercial providers, however.

“…instead of continuing to buy government-owned satellites…take a step back…Instead of spending Herculean amounts of taxpayer dollars to get yesterday’s SATCOM links, partner with satellite operators that are already ahead of the curve.” – Nicole Robinson

Over the past decade, the satellite industry has been investing heavily and innovating new capabilities and solutions. The result has been the evolution of high throughput satellites (HTS) that utilize multiple, more powerful spot beams to deliver higher throughputs and bandwidth. There has also been a proliferation of HTS in orbits closer to Earth than geostationary (GEO) orbit – enabling the delivery of high throughput connectivity with low latencies.

But to embrace and adopt these solutions would require a massive sea-change in how the government and military have traditionally acquired satellite solutions.

From purpose-built to combined military-commercial architecture
Historically, when the government and military wanted to acquire satellite capacity, they commissioned a company to build them a satellite to their specifications that they then launched into space and operated themselves. They controlled these satellites and knew they were secure because they owned and operated them.

Unfortunately, the existing wideband communications satellites that the military owns are not high throughput satellites and they’re all in the GEO orbit. To construct and launch their own HTS satellite at an orbit closer to Earth – Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) or Lower Earth Orbit (LEO) – would take years and be extremely expensive. Utilizing commercial capabilities gives the government and military access to these technologies and orbits immediately, and at a fraction of the price.

“…instead of continuing to buy government-owned satellites…take a step back,” Nicole suggested. “Instead of spending Herculean amounts of taxpayer dollars to get yesterday’s SATCOM links, partner with satellite operators that are already ahead of the curve.”

But that means forsaking old satellite acquisition models and partnering with industry to make COMSATCOM solutions an integrated part of a combined government and commercial satellite architecture.

“Maybe, instead of thinking about who owns it, think about having a combined architecture,” Nicole explained. “It’s time to debunk the myth of what commercial and military satellite should and could do. Instead of having the ongoing ‘us vs them’ conversation, we need to have a ‘we’ view of the world.”

This concept of a combined, integrated satellite architecture is something that senior leadership within the military has claimed to embrace. In fact, the inaugural Chief of Space Operations at the United States Space Force, General John W. “Jay” Raymond, committed to, “…continue engaging commercial partners to evaluate opportunities that may complement or possibly replace portions of a traditional military SATCOM purpose-built system.”

But large changes in vision, culture, and approach are never simple, fast, or easy, and many within the military have concerns that giving up ownership of satellites will decrease security and control.

Much like with cloud adoption, if the government and military can put aside their belief that control can only come with ownership, there are considerable benefits they can realize from embracing commercial satellite. Many of those benefits are a result of satellite operators innovating over time to meet the requirements and solve the problems of their commercial customers.

“Industry has always been out front,” Brad said. “They’ve always been innovating because they have lots of commercial customers that are doing very innovative things and solving very complicated problems that look a lot like government problems.”

To bring these commercial benefits and innovations to the military, and to make this vision of a combined satellite architecture possible, there needs to be a change in how the military works with its commercial partners. This means giving industry a seat at the table, working with them to identify and shape requirements in advance of issuing task orders, and challenging them to innovate on not just technologies, but also on business models.

“The U.S. military is starting to acknowledge they need to do more than just solve the connection – issuing task orders and buying capacity,” Brad explained. “That’s an old paradigm that’s dead on arrival now.”

Cloud adoption was difficult and slow in the government. It took a fundamental change in how government-operated and a movement away from the culture and belief of having to own everything to ensure control and security. However, those tough changes ushered in a wave of new innovation that is revolutionizing government. The same lessons learned from cloud adoption can be applied to commercial satellite. The organizational and cultural changes will be significant, but the access to connectivity and capability that COMSATCOM will deliver could be just as revolutionary for our government.

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