With the Pentagon completing a blueprint for the Golden Dome missile defense system in September 2025, now under review, the satellite industry is preparing to play a significant role as initial concepts evolve and the system architecture is defined. Satellite networks have long played a critical role in supporting defense capabilities across all U.S. military, defense, and intelligence agencies, including the Space Force.

Today, satellites enable secure communication among military leaders and warfighters. They support intelligence gathering, weather monitoring, and enhanced situational awareness. GPS satellites provide precision positioning and timing data for soldiers, aircraft, and military vehicles. Satellites embedded with sensors and cameras capture, track, and transmit critical information related to enemy ground, air, sea, and orbital activity, helping to anticipate and provide the opportunity to neutralize threats.

“Golden Dome is the United States’ defense initiative to address adversary missile threats,” explained Bryan Benedict, Senior Director of Innovation and Satellite Programs at SES Space & Defense. “Golden Dome encompasses the detection, analysis, tracking, and response of threats coming from conventional ICBMs, and from hypersonic ballistic missiles, which have completely different signatures.”

While still in the conceptual stage, Golden Dome will undoubtedly feature highly advanced space technology and a myriad of space-based components to protect the homeland from missile and advanced-weapon attacks. The program will elevate the space and satellite industry’s role in U.S. defense to an entirely new level.

From detecting, tracking, and even intercepting missiles to enabling data transmission and real-time communication among disparate assets, satellites will play an integral role within the Golden Dome architecture in the following three ways:

Gaining the Early Warning Advantage: 
A primary function of Golden Dome satellites is to detect missile launches instantly, regardless of where they occur worldwide. Infrared-equipped satellites in Geostationary (GEO), Medium Earth (MEO), and Lower Earth Orbits (LEO) can detect the heat signatures of hypersonic and ballistic missile launches and track their trajectories, enabling earlier threat detection and improved response coordination.

This multi-orbit approach is crucial, a point emphasized by Randall Trent, Senior Advisor, Business and Product Development at SES Space & Defense. “GEO satellites will be able to detect the launch, and then other systems can be alerted that something is coming. GEO sees the launch, MEO and LEO then follow it and track it. A successful Golden Dome architecture will require the use of assets in multiple orbits and an extensive ground connection infrastructure.”

Defense from Space:
In addition to detecting launches, satellites within the architecture could provide and forward information to defensive positions, enabling the tasking of ground- and space-based interceptors capable of destroying enemy missiles before multiple warheads are deployed. Commercial spacecraft will both augment and enhance the resiliency of the U.S. government’s sovereign systems – ultimately denying enemies the ability to use space to launch attacks.

A Resilient Nerve Center:
Perhaps most crucially, satellites will serve as the backbone for a secure, resilient, and centralized command and control system, connecting all space-based assets with those on the ground and at sea, providing real-time exchange of data and high-resolution imagery.

Satellite-powered communications will arm military decision-makers with critical insights related to battlefield conditions and enemy actions, all of which can be securely shared and used to inform decision-making at the highest levels, ensuring that responses to threats are coordinated, rapid, and effective.

Thus far, funding allocated for Golden Dome is a fraction of what will be required to advance the missile defense system from concept to reality. In the near term, the Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is using the Scalable Homeland Innovative Enterprise Layered Defense (SHIELD) IDIQ to identify companies capable of contributing to the Golden Dome architecture and to facilitate commercial collaboration.

In the long run, the successful execution of the program will be dependent on the prowess and technological innovations these space and satellite companies can deliver.

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NASA pioneered communications satellite technology and supported its commercialization in the 1960s, but continues to operate the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) system. The geostationary-orbiting TDRS satellites enable the agency to stay in continuous touch with its scientific and crewed spacecraft, including the International Space Station.

The latest such satellite, TDRS-M launched in 2017. If all goes according to plan, TDRS-M will be the last of its kind, said Phil McAlister, NASA director of commercial spaceflight development.

Beginning in the mid- to late 2020s, NASA will begin offloading its mission data relay requirements to commercial systems, McAlister said Dec. 11 at a Washington Space Business Roundtable Luncheon. The transition is expected to be complete in the 2030s, as the aging TDRS system loses global coverage.

“Today, it doesn’t make sense for the government to own our own satellite communications system,” McAlister said. U.S. national space policy calls for government agencies to rely on commercial capabilities to the maximum practical extent, and satellite communications, as a relatively mature industry, is ripe for outsourcing, he added.

Through the Communications Services Program (CSP), NASA aims to foster private-sector development of TDRS replacement capabilities, McAlister said. The agency has budgeted some $300 million for the effort over the next five years, beginning in 2020.

NASA will dictate top-level CSP requirements only, leaving the technological and operational approach to the private sector, McAlister said.  “We just want commercial services that are reliable and cost effective,” he said. “If you can do the mission we need to talk.”

The CSP will be carried out in three phases, the first of which entails identifying agency requirements and communicating those to industry, McAlister said. That phase, which also includes program planning, is already underway.

The second phase, which under the notional schedule laid out by McAlister begins around 2021, features demonstrations of relevant commercial capabilities and is open ended to accommodate new systems and technologies. NASA will begin acquiring TDRS replacement capabilities in the final phase, which would start around 2023.

McAlister said the CSP continues a NASA outsourcing trend that began in the mid-2000s, when the agency launched efforts to nurture commercial cargo and crew transportation services to the space station. The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has been moving in a similar direction with some of its satellite communications requirements.

Any company currently providing satellite communications services to the DoD is presumed eligible to compete for CSP work, McAlister said.

Among the Pentagon’s go-to providers is SES Space and Defense, a subsidiary of global satellite operator SES that was created to serve government markets. SES owns satellite fleets in both geostationary and medium Earth orbit.

NASA does not intend to furnish equipment to its commercial CSP vendors, McAlister said, adding that the agency wants end-to-end services. The program will include on-ramps to accommodate emerging capabilities as the industry continues to innovate.

With the CSP budget slated to ramp up in the next few years, NASA intends to fund multiple demonstrations, to be followed by the selection of multiple companies to provide services on a competitive basis. McAlister laid out an operational scenario in which NASA mission managers would competitively award task orders among the prequalified vendors.

NASA’s desire is to be one of many users of CSP capabilities, but will only take responsibility for meeting its own specific needs, McAlister said. TDRS satellites have long provided data relay services to other U.S. government agencies, and he invited these agencies to participate in the CSP and bring their own money and requirements to the table.

The CSP will cover NASA’s data relay needs for satellites operating in geostationary orbit and below, McAlister said. Missions with NASA-unique requirements, such as planetary probes, will continue to use government-operated systems including the agency’s ground-based Deep Space Network, he said.

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However, not all communities and sectors within the federal government have been as bullish about cloud adoption. While civilian agencies and the intelligence community have all worked to move data and workloads into the cloud, the defense community has been reticent to go “all in” with cloud solutions – often citing security and other concerns.

But that’s starting to change.

We’re increasingly hearing senior leadership across all of the branches of the military talking about a need to move to the cloud. These discussions recently culminated in the Pentagon’s release of the Defense Enterprise Cloud Strategy earlier this year, which referred to the cloud as an essential part of defense IT infrastructure that would, “empower the warfighter with data and is critical to maintaining our military’s technological advantage.”

Chances are, this new desire to aggressively move the Department of Defense (DoD) into the cloud isn’t a result of some top-down mandate. Rather, it’s a result of the military sitting back and seeing the benefits that the intelligence community and civilian agencies are reaping from their cloud initiatives. And now they want those benefits for themselves.

The cloud’s positive impact on government
Within in the Intel community, the cloud has made information sharing much easier and more effective – which was no small feat considering that intel agencies often struggled with information sharing in the past. The cloud has also made it faster and cheaper for intel and civilian agencies to develop and roll out new applications and IT solutions – effectively eliminating the need to provision new physical servers and data centers for applications.

And while the cost savings and increased speed of execution has certainly been attractive, there have been other, fringe benefits that have resulted from their cloud migrations.

The cloud has enabled these agencies to experiment more and implement innovative IT programs with less concern about failure. Since little physical infrastructure investment is necessary to execute on new IT programs, there are few ramifications if a program fails or an application doesn’t gain traction within the agency.

The wide reach and geographic spread of cloud providers also creates benefits for government agencies. Emergency and disaster situations are less likely to knock out applications and services since they can be moved from one of a cloud provider’s data centers to another in a location that wasn’t impacted – something that would be impossible without significant cost for an agency operating using only brick and mortar enterprise data centers. This also allows data and applications to be housed and hosted geographically closer to where they’re needed, since most cloud providers operate a massive number of data centers in various different geographies.

The military has seen these benefits in action for the intel and civilian agencies and they understandably want access to them, as well. But they face a unique challenge that they’re going to have to overcome if they’re going to migrate necessary applications, IT services and tools into the cloud.

Connecting military personnel to cloud capabilities
The DoD has civilian personnel, senior leaders and active duty warfighters deployed across much of the globe. The organization is extremely large, and extremely distributed.

At home within the United States, on military bases and in office buildings, highspeed, broadband connectivity is almost taken for granted. It’s ubiquitous and available to deliver the most bandwidth-hungry applications and IT services to anyone who needs to access them.

But, when you start to cross outside U.S. borders, when you leave military bases, when you operate outside of allied nations with stable and reliable infrastructure, that connectivity can evaporate. And that’s a massive problem when all of the applications and IT services that military personnel rely on are hosted in the cloud – and a reliable, high-bandwidth connection is necessary to access them.

The fact is, the experience for military personnel on a military base is nothing like the experience for personnel in a forward operating base. Should there not be consistent, reliable network connectivity, should networks not be secure, or should terrestrial networks simply not exist, deployed military personnel will not have access to cloud-hosted tools and applications. And that’s probably where they’ll need them the most.

But there is a solution in the form of satellite communications.

Satellite: the military’s key to the cloud
In places where terrestrial networks are nonexistent, unreliable, insecure or lack the necessary bandwidth for military applications, satellite communications can fill the military’s connectivity requirements.

Needing little ground infrastructure to operate and available from space to practically anywhere on the globe, satellite is an adept alternative for delivering the connectivity warfighters need to access cloud applications and tools. This is especially true thanks to recent innovations and advancements in commercial satellites and satellite constellations.

Today’s innovative High-Throughput Satellites (HTS) are now available at orbits closer to the Earth, including Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), which drastically reduce latency and deliver an experience on par with high-speed terrestrial fiber networks. This is essential for delivering access to advanced cloud solutions that may require low latency environments, including cloud applications that require less than 200 milliseconds of latency.

In addition to their ability to deliver immense bandwidth, high throughputs and low latency, these MEO HTS satellites are also more secure. Comprised of moving satellites utilizing small spot beams, communications sent via MEO constellations – such as the SES O3b MEO satellite constellation – are harder to jam and intercept.

As military operations continue to become more network-enabled, and as military IT solutions and applications continue to make their way into the cloud, connectivity for the warfighter is only going to increase in importance. MEO satellites are the most available, reliable and secure solution for giving deployed military personnel and warfighters access to the cloud regardless of where they are on the planet.

For additional information about MEO satellite constellations and their potential use cases for the military, click HERE.

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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.

The members of this star-studded panel included:

• Warren Ferster: Editor-in-Chief of Space News (moderator)
• Winston Beauchamp: Deputy Under Secretary of the Air Force for Space, and the Director, Principal DoD Space Advisor Staff
• Peter F. Hoene: President & CEO, SES Space and Defense
• Rick Lober: VP and GM of the Defense & Intelligence Systems Division at Hughes Network Systems
• Kay Sears: President, Intelsat General
• Leonor Tomero: Professional Staff Member, House Committee on Armed Services
• Joe Vanderpoorten: Space & Missile Systems Center Pathfinder Program Office

Together, these satellite experts explored the difficult situation that the Air Force and the rest of the United States military is facing; namely, the rapidly approaching end of the Wideband Global SATCOM system (WGS) fleet program.

The WGS satellite constellation is comprised of ten disparate spacecraft that were scheduled for launch over the course of a decade. The final WGS satellite – WGS-10 – is slated to launch in FY18. The WGS system is a replacement for the aging Defense Satellite Communications System (DCSC), which had limited capacity compared to WGS and commercial satellites.

At a time of budget uncertainty and cost-cutting within the federal government, the exorbitant price tag on each of the WGS satellites seems unsustainable in both the near and distant future. This has the military looking at less expensive alternatives for satellite communications requirements following the launch of WGS-10. One of the alternatives being discussed across the space segment is the deliberate integration of commercial satellite communications (COMSATCOM) services into the National Security Space architecture.

The reasons to look to COMSATCOM as a key national security enabler were presented by Leonor Tomero, who identified, “new threats, fiscal constraints, [and a] need for resilience,” as drivers for this renewed interest in COMSATCOM services. Ultimately, Ms. Tomero noted that, “Relying more on commercial capability…may be more advantageous for the tax payer…“

Can COMSATCOM answer the call for satellite bandwidth following WGS-10? According to Pete Hoene of SES Space and Defense, “I think the answer to that is, “Yes,” and we are encouraged by…how the industry brings innovative solutions to the table.”

Despite assurances from the COMSTCOM industry that they can handle the bandwidth demands from the military, there are some concerns from the government about using COMSATCOM in this capacity. Many of these concerns circle around the Extremely High Frequency (EHF) wavelength, which has been utilized exclusively in the government satellites due to a lack of business cases to embrace it within the COMSATCOM industry.

This sentiment was echoed by Winston Beauchamp when he stated that the Department of Defense, “Historically [has] not seen a business case for commercial bandwidth in the EHF band.” Despite the DoD being, “committed to close partnerships and collaborations in the industry as we plan our next generation satellite architecture,” Mr. Beauchamp reiterated that, “While DoD is looking for services available commercially, that band is not commercially available.”

Discussion around the EHF and security of satellite communications is at a fever pitch thanks in large part to something that we heard extensively at this year’s SATCON Conference in New York, NY – space is an increasingly contested environment. Our adversaries know the military’s reliance on SATCOM for information sharing, intelligence gathering and remotely piloted aircraft operations, and have made significant strides towards intercepting, jamming, disabling and destruction of satellites and satellite communications.

The lack of EHF capacity on existing COMSATCOM spacecraft doesn’t mean that industry can’t support the military when it comes to providing secure communications.

First, there’s the opportunity to launch EHF payloads as hosted payloads aboard COMSATCOM satellites. In this situation, the military would place their mission-critical EHF payloads on commercial satellites that are slated to be launched in space. The COMSATCOM provider and military would then share the cost of launch and satellite operation, effectively slashing the total cost of launching the payload.

Mr. Beauchamp validated the potential to launch EHF payloads and systems as hosted payloads when he said, “Certainly for protected tactical systems you would want to see options that include hosted payloads.”

But launching EHF systems as hosted payloads is just one way that COMSATCOM services can help protect military satellites and communications. As Mr. Beauchamp explained, “I wouldn’t say that just because COMSATCOM systems don’t have the protections that MILSATCOM has that they are in any way less contributing to a resiliency. In fact, the diversity of these systems in itself contribute to resiliency.”

This increase in resiliency is an end result of deception and distribution. Distributing military communications through COMSATCOM satellites makes it extremely difficult to pinpoint exactly which satellite is carrying mission-critical communications for the U.S. military, making it harder for our adversaries to target a particular spacecraft. Mr. Beauchamp illustrated this point when he explained how COMSATCOM, “provide[s a] very complex environment to adversaries [and]… make[s] it as difficult as possible for them to really understand what it would take to hold our capabilities at risk.”

But deception is just one resiliency benefit of COMSATCOM. The distribution of military communications across multiple satellites – including COMSATCOM satellites – ensures that there is no one single point of failure, and that the compromise of one satellite doesn’t impact communications as a whole.

Despite the promise of secure military communications across COMSATCOM, and the ability to drastically reduce the cost of satellite bandwidth and capabilities across the military, there are still questions about how best to acquire and pay for satellite services. To gauge the effectiveness of different COMSATCOM services and their cost benefits, the Air Force launched a series of programs called, “Pathfinders.” These Pathfinder programs utilize acquisition dollars to purchase transponders that are then turned over to COMSATCOM providers to operate and service for a multiyear period.

When discussing the first Pathfinder program, panelist Peter Hoene of SES Space and Defense said, “[Pathfinder One] is a really key initiative and…broke a lot new ground. The idea of the government buying…a transponder and allowing the COMSATCOM owner/operator to operate that for their needs is really a breakthrough.”

The benefits of the Pathfinder program were extolled by Joe Vanderpoorten of the Air Force Space & Missile Systems Center, who claimed that the Pathfinder One program has been successful in delivering bandwidth to the customer, while also being, “successful economically.”

With the WGS program coming to a quick and abrupt end, the DoD and Congress need to identify how they’re going to bring new satellite capabilities on line following the launch of WGS-10. The panel discussion showed that COMSATCOM can provide the new technologies, increased flexibility and cost savings that are essential to the military today. By continuing to aggregate COMSATCOM purchasing under the authority of a single entity, finding new and innovative ways to purchase COMSATCOM services and working to integrate COMSATCOM services into a single network with military satellite capabilities, the DoD can be sure that they have a secure, resilient satellite network capable of delivering information when and where needed, in all situations and theaters.

Additional Resources:

• Sign up for upcoming WSBR events here
• Overview: SES Space and Defense Support for Pathfinder I
• U.S. Air Force Signs trailblazing Lease for SES Satellite Capacity – Space News

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