On Friday, the DoD announced that it had awarded SES Space and Defense a task order against its existing, single-award Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) for the purchase of the company’s new, portable maritime solution. This integrated, self-contained hardware solution will enable the DoD to easily and seamlessly deliver high-throughput, low-latency connectivity to ships at sea, docks, and forward operating bases via the SES O3b MEO satellite constellation.

The integrated nature of this new hardware solution makes it easy to airlift, forklift, or tow to where connectivity is needed, and requires nothing but a power source to deliver a veritable bubble of 5G or Wifi connectivity to network-enabled solutions, platforms, and vehicles at the tactical edge. According to SES, this new solution features a, “…self-contained ruggedized design [that] houses all equipment in a rack system with AC unit, power distribution, and a battery backup system and can achieve upwards of 400 Mbps x 200 Mbps of throughput over the O3b network.”

As Brigadier General Pete Hoene, USAF (retired), the President and CEO of SES Space and Defense, explained, “The need to provide resilient and diverse satellite communications is critical to meeting Department of Defense SATCOM requirements. This…turnkey MEO terminal…can be scaled up or down based on the number of users and support requirements. The demonstrated throughput is unsurpassed in a portable maritime system of this size.”

The DoD use cases for this new mobile solution are almost too-numerable to count – from enabling morale, welfare and recreation (MWR) capabilities aboard ships at sea, to the establishment of fully-connected, IT-enabled field hospitals with telemedicine capability in warzones. But the task order for this new mobile solution was just one of the major satellite announcements coming out of the DoD and SES this past week with the potential to deliver a more connected warfighter.

On Monday of this week, SES announced that it was working in partnership with a “key U.S. Government customer” to design, develop and field a loopback capability that would, “…provide greatly improved mission-critical communications for DoD operations in remote locations in Southwest Asia.”

Acquired via yet another task order issued against the existing, single-award BPA with the DoD, the implementation of this loopback configuration enables the DoD to utilize SES O3b MEO high-throughput, low-latency connectivity without the use of a commercial gateway. This is accomplished by leveraging, “…an in-theatre hub that provides in-beam connectivity, similar to a hub-spoke configuration, and is managed and controlled from an SES Network Operations Centre (NOC) via a Skala Network terminal.”

The adoption of this loopback configuration and the continued use of the SES O3b MEO satellite service will act as a bridge to enable warfighters that are off-grid and operating at the tip of the spear in Southwest Asia to still access important communications, intelligence information, and network-enabled platforms and applications.

“The growing threat within the region requires the troops to have access to near real-time decision-making intelligence at the tactical edge. This mission requires high-throughput, low-latency connectivity that only our O3b MEO constellation can provide flexibly,” explained Hoene. ” We understand these troops’ mission requirements in areas where there is no reliable terrestrial connectivity, and we’re excited to bring innovative and secure solutions via satellite to solve their problems.”

The need for connectivity at the edge is only increasing as the military embraces advanced network-enabled vehicles, systems, platforms, and weapons systems. These new DoD announcements not only illustrate how essential the military views network connectivity for its future mission and operations, but also illustrate the continued importance and reliance on satellite services and offerings to meet those connectivity requirements.

For additional information on the new, portable maritime solution being embraced by the DoD, click HERE. For additional information on the recently announced loopback configuration, click HERE.

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As network-enabled solutions have increasingly made their way into government and military operations, connectivity at the edge has become increasingly essential. Seemingly every government application, system, platform, or weapons system today is network-enabled or relies on access to data. Unfortunately, many government and military missions are conducted in places where terrestrial networks aren’t available.

In the case of our military, operations may be conducted in the middle of a foreign nation where they have yet to invest in building a terrestrial network infrastructure. Or, existing network infrastructures may be denied or untrusted for transmitting sensitive military data. Or, the mission may involve a ship at sea or a transport plane traveling well beyond the reach of any existing terrestrial network.

But this requirement isn’t limited to the military, and our government doesn’t only face this challenge outside of our borders. Large swaths of this nation – in many rural and remote locations – lack high-bandwidth terrestrial network connectivity. And places that do have terrestrial networks may find them compromised when they’re needed most – times like disaster scenarios and emergency relief situations.

In these instances, the ability for satellite to deliver connectivity to virtually anywhere, regardless of the presence of terrestrial networks is what makes it so essential. Unfortunately, satellite connectivity carries a stigma and misconceptions about ease of use and accessibility. There have long been concerns about the cost, interoperability, availability, and mobility of the ground hardware necessary to utilize satellites. And there have also been concerns among government users about cost and dependability.

Luckily, technological advancements and the introduction of new solutions and satellite acquisition models over the course of the last few years have gone a long way towards eliminating these challenges and misconceptions. Over the course of the next few articles, I’ll be joined by my associates at SES Space and Defense and other contributors to the Government Satellite Report as we look at some of the exciting new solutions, advancements, and offerings that are making satellite connectivity easier to use, more accessible and more available to the government organizations that need it in the field.

And one of the first offerings we’d like to discuss isn’t something new, per se. Rather, it’s a satellite managed service offering that has become a best practice in the private sector and is now being offered with the same dependability, reliability, and customer support that’s needed for government use cases – the SKALA Global Network.

Shared capacity on virtually any hardware
Traditionally, the use of commercial or purpose-built satellites by the government or military requires that the user builds the entire end-to-end infrastructure. Needless to say, this is an incredibly time-consuming and expensive undertaking with a return that may not be worth the investment. This is especially true for government agencies responsible for emergency and disaster response that will use their satellite solutions sporadically and only when disaster strikes.

But what if that agency could utilize the satellite hardware – terminals and antennas – that they already have to quickly, easily, and seamlessly connect via a commercial satellite solution without having to build the connection to the Internet and the uplink/downlink to the satellite? What if they could simply lease a small amount of capacity for a short period of time and have it function – when needed – without having to invest in and install hardware at a teleport? This is what satellite managed service offerings can deliver.

“With satellite managed service solutions, such as SKALA, agencies get just the satellite connectivity and capacity that they need for the short period of time in which they’re responding to an emergency situation…”

The managed service approach to commercial satellite acquisition is something that has become commonplace – or even a best practice – across the maritime industry in recent years. And it’s now something that’s available for government agencies through managed service offerings such as the SES Space and Defense SKALA Global Platform.

To implement SKALA, SES Space and Defense invested in and built the terrestrial network infrastructure necessary to make an end-to-end satellite solution function. Government agencies and organizations need only to have an existing contract with the company and load a configuration file onto their existing terminals and antennas to receive the satellite connectivity that they need.

With satellite managed service solutions, such as SKALA, agencies get just the satellite connectivity and capacity that they need for the short period of time in which they’re responding to an emergency situation. And they get access to that capacity without having to integrate their own hardware into a teleport, or invest in new hardware and terminals.

But there has been some concern within the government when it comes to acquiring satellite as a managed service because the satellite capacity of a spacecraft or transponder is available and shared between a number of different users. Sharing capacity through a satellite managed service has created hesitancy among government organizations that are wary that the capacity will be taken or monopolized by other users when it’s needed most.

Thankfully, this is another concern that has been eliminated via innovation and new technologies.

Companies like SES Space and Defense that are offering managed service solutions are embracing contention ratios that ensure that the number of users – and the number of terminals in use across those users – will never approach the bandwidth and capacity limits. They’re also utilizing next-generation network management solutions and spacecraft with steerable beams to ensure that the requisite, contracted capacity is always available when it’s needed most.

As government agencies and the military increasingly rely on network-connected solutions, applications, and systems to accomplish their missions, the need for connectivity will only grow. And the off-grid nature of many of those missions will only make satellite an increasingly essential part of their operations in the future. Agencies that have avoided embracing satellite because of the hardware requirements and fear of high costs no longer have to go without.

Managed services, like SKALA, are the solution – making it possible to get the requisite connectivity with the necessary reliability they need without the effort and expense of building their own end-to-end satellite system.

In the next article in this series, my associate, Ernie Higham, will take an in-depth look at innovative, all-inclusive mobile terminal solutions that are making high-throughput, low-latency connectivity possible practically anywhere on the planet.

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