So, it would be safe to assume that an organization entering a pandemic soon after achieving FOC would experience at least some hurdles and hiccups. But the picture that Lieutenant General JT Thompson, Commander of Space Force’s SMC, paints reveals quite the opposite.

On May 12, 2021, Thompson sat down with the Mitchell Institute’s Space Power Forum to highlight what SMC accomplished during the pandemic, discuss the growing roles that the commercial space sector and international partnerships are playing in the advancement of SMC’s capabilities, and to give an update on the Space Systems Command‘s (SSC) stand up process.

Thompson opened the forum by providing an impressive rundown of all that SMC achieved during the last year and a half. After giving a special nod to SMC for its high performance throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, he reaffirmed, with pride, SMC’s ability to persevere and advance its mission of providing unparalleled space capabilities to joint warfighters.

Despite the pandemic, SMC performed seven national security space launches, completed the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) constellation, added two more GPS III satellites to the Position, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) constellation, and awarded the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 2 contract on-time and without protest. To Thompson, 2020 was, without a doubt, an extremely successful year for SMC.

SMC made further progress through the expansion of the Space Enterprise Consortium (SpEC), by adding its 500th member, as well as awarding a new management contract for SpEC, which was comprised of a 10 year, $12 billion deal. SpEC was originally created “to bridge the cultural gap between military buyers and commercial space startups and small businesses through OTAs.” Fostering the growth of SMC’s relationship with the commercial space sector was a consistent theme that Thompson returned to throughout the forum.

The commercial space sector, Thompson believes, will be key in outpacing the advancement of adversarial counterspace systems. He explained, “I think we need to go bigger and bolder on incorporating commercial space capabilities into the service. We also saw…the increased development and testing of counter space systems by our adversaries, China and Russia. To compete in the space domain for the next decade, we really have to continue to refine our programs and our architectures in ways that allow us to both rapidly and efficiently partner with these new space startups.”

Thompson also underscored the commercial sector’s potential in enhancing and advancing Space Force’s space domain awareness, space traffic management, and weather monitoring initiatives.
He emphasized that commercial markets are driving a paradigm shift in speed, access, and relevance in the tactical battle space, but due to current Planning, Programming, Budgeting, and Execution (PPBE) procurement requirements models, SMC doesn’t have as much flexibility as it should to pursue capabilities and technologies that the sector offers.

“It’s not an acquisition problem,” Thompson stated. “It’s a whole of the Department [of Defense] problem to try and access these commercial things on relevant timelines. We have a lot of engagements with industry. They have a ton of sharp folks who love to experiment, and they want to get after new ways to integrate commercial capabilities and capacities into our architecture.”

Thompson noted that similar to the booming potential the commercial sector offers the SMC, international and allied partnerships’ potential is just as booming. He explained that allied partners are playing an increasingly critical role in the U.S.’ “resilience to and deterrence of hostile and unsafe activity in space.”

In November of last year, SMC held the International Space Pitch Day, which resulted in the awarding of contracts to 10 small businesses across the U.K., Australia, U.S., and India. He gave an exciting update that earlier this year, the awardees presented progress in cutting edge areas such as blockchain, machine learning, and artificial intelligence (AI). He praised the outcomes that sprang from the pitch day event and reported that SMC has received a huge wave of interest from other host countries around the world to participate in International Space Pitch Day in 2022. “It’s a relatively small effort,” said Thompson. “It’s relatively small dollars, but we’re seeing a huge impact from it.”

Another international partnership success story included the memorandum of understanding (MOU) that General John W. Raymond, Chief of Space Operations at the U.S. Space Force, signed with Japan last December. The MOU supports the Quasi-Zenith Satellite System (QZSS) program to host a pair of U.S. payloads on two Japanese satellites.

U.S. Space Force’s collaboration with Space Norway and the Norwegian Ministry of Defense for the Enhanced Polar System – Recapitalization (EPS-R) was another win that Thompson highlighted. The EPS-R partnership enables payload hosting on two Norwegian polar satellites for artic communications purposes.

According to Thompson, the U.S. Space Force is currently discussing and exploring international space acquisition partnerships with Colombia, Peru, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina. Thompson said, “If the global space economy is going to grow as it’s expected…then we’ve got to be able to take advantage of these international partnerships over the next few years, to the mutual advantage of ourselves and our allies.”

Thompson also updated the forum on the stand up process of the Space Systems Command (SSC). In April of this year, U.S. Space Force announced launching SSC to take over technology development and acquisition, which has previously been under SMC’s purview. Thompson reported that SSC is planned be stood up this summer, pending a Commander’s nomination and confirmation.

“By continuing to collaborate with space acquisition organizations and bring them closer into the architectural collaborations that we have, I think that those partnerships will continue to pay huge dividends,” said Thompson.

To hear more from U.S. Space Force’s Lt Gen JT Thompson watch the space power forum on-demand here!

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The plan also will address potential demonstrations, or pathfinders, that the Air Force has used in the past to prove out new procurement and utilization concepts for commercial satellite capacity, said Air Force Lt. Gen. John Thompson, commander of Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) in Los Angeles and program executive officer for space. Traditionally, the Department of Defense (DoD) has procured commercial bandwidth under relatively short-term contracts, often on the spot market, which industry officials have long argued is inefficient and makes it difficult to plan for future military needs.

The strategy initiative follows the congressionally mandated transfer of responsibility for procuring commercial satellite capacity for military users from the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) to the Air Force. That transfer, which formally took effect in December 2018, responds to longstanding concerns about a lack of coordination between DISA and the Air Force, which buys and operates its own communications satellites.

In an April 9 keynote address at the 35^th annual Space Symposium, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson said the transfer will enable the service to take a holistic approach to the military satellite communications enterprise. “That [transfer] will be a tremendous help, as there is very clear synergy between commercial communications satellite capabilities and those of the Defense Department,” she said.

Thompson, in an April 11 media briefing along with other Air Force space procurement leaders at the Symposium, said the strategy now in development breaks down the stovepipes that have long existed between commercial and government-owned systems.

“We are working very closely with commercial satellite providers and our traditional military satellite communication providers to make that strategy happen,” Thompson said. “I would expect a formal rollout of that strategy later this year.”

The strategy review also follows the Air Force’s long anticipated Analysis of Alternatives for wideband satellite communications, which was completed last summer. According to Air Force officials, that study concluded that the DoD will continue to rely on a mix of government and commercial assets for wideband services, which comprise the biggest chunk of the military’s satellite communications requirements.

Commercial satellite operators have long pushed for a larger piece of the overall DoD market pie, and have been deploying new capacity in different orbits to match those ambitions. Satellite operator SES, for example, on April 4 completed deployment of its first-generation O3b MEO broadband constellation with the launch of four new spacecraft aboard a Soyuz rocket operated by Europe’s Arianespace consortium.

Now consisting 20 satellites in medium Earth orbit (MEO) covering 70 percent of the world’s population, O3b provides fiber-like services with minimal latency, or lag, between signal transmission and reception, compared to geostationary orbiting satellites.  Reston, Va.-based SES Space and Defense, which provides SES satellite capacity to the U.S. government, last June signed a blanket purchase agreement with DoD for up to $516.7 million worth of high-throughput services from O3b through April 2023.

“O3b’s low-latency, high-throughput services support time-critical enterprise applications that are becoming integral to modern military operations,” said Peter Hoene, president and chief executive of SES-Government Services. “This capability is unique in the marketplace, providing a strong complement to our geostationary satellite services.”

SES will begin deploying its second-generation MEO constellation, dubbed O3b mPOWER, in 2021-2022. Those seven satellites, under construction by Boeing, will dramatically increase the capacity, flexibility and coverage of the O3b constellation, allowing for higher throughput at fiber-like latency SES also operates more than 50 satellites in higher geostationary orbit, and counts the government as a major customer for services from those spacecraft.

Thompson said the next series of pathfinder experiments are still being debated but that there is a lot of interest in terminals that are interoperable with multiple satellite systems, both military and commercial. “Right now within the Department of Defense, the numbers I’ve heard is between 130 to 160 different kinds of unique satellite communications terminals,” he said. “I think that’s an area where having a multi-capable terminal and reducing the number of different configurations is something that industry is very excited about.”

A number of companies have such equipment in development and testing.  Antenna maker ThinKom Solutions of Hawthorne, Calif., for example, is testing a phased-array antenna that the company says can switch seamlessly between individual satellite beams and from constellation-to-constellation, including MEO and geostationary systems. Some of the testing has been carried out on the O3b constellation in cooperation with SES, ThinKom has said.

Thompson said the Air Force is looking at how to take advantage of where the commercial market appears headed. As an example, he cited satellite systems with a large number of individual “soda straw-sized” beams – as opposed to beams covering much larger areas – as beneficial because transmissions over these systems are more difficult for potential adversaries to detect or disrupt.

The planned O3b mPOWER satellites dramatically increase the number of spot beams available, according to SES Space and Defense. The current O3b satellites feature 10 individual beams apiece, whereas the Future O3b mPOWER satellites will each have more than 4,000 beams, a 400% increase according to company literature.

The Air Force is reviewing a number of pathfinder proposals as part of the overarching strategy review, Thompson said.

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Partnerships between agencies, allies and, importantly, with the industry are a key element of the emerging U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) strategy to preserve access to critical space capabilities in the face of growing threats posed by potential U.S. adversaries, senior national security leaders said.

“In a contested space environment, partnerships strengthen our advantage and complicate potential adversary decision-making,” said Gen. Jay Raymond, commander of U.S. Air Force Space Command, which delivers space capabilities to the warfighters. He noted, for example, the Air Force’s strong relationship with the U.S. National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which buys and operates the nation’s reconnaissance satellites.

“We’ve also got several partnership opportunities we’re working with the commercial world,” Raymond said. “Those range from launch to re-entry and everything in between.”

Bookended by launch and re-entry are commercial satellite-delivered services including imagery and communications, upon which the military and intelligence community have come to depend.

DoD Looks to Determine Next-Generation Architecture
“In the old days, the processing power of the [communications] throughput that was available out there in industry was not what we needed—we had to develop our own,” NRO Director Betty Sapp said in a Space Symposium keynote address. “Those days are long gone—commercial has more than what we need.”

The Defense Department in recent years has spent $1 billion or more on commercial satellite capacity, according to space industry officials. Commercial satellites continue to carry a significant portion of U.S. military communications traffic, and demand is expected to increase in the coming years.

The Air Force, an operator of the Wideband Global Satcom system that the service characterizes as the backbone of its satellite communications fleet, is in the midst of an Analysis of Alternatives (AoA) to determine the content of its next-generation architecture. A key question is what is the best mix of mix of government and commercially owned assets to help the DoD do its job in the years ahead.

DoD Underserved by Terrestrial Links
The DoD could realize an exponential leap in communications capability by pulling together multiple commercial and military constellations into a single network where users are able to move seamlessly between constellations.  Gen John Hyten, Commander of U.S. Strategic Command, has stated that, “SATCOM systems are key to our continued strategic posture in space…”

Among those systems, SES’ O3b MEO fleet is unique in that it operates in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) at about 8,000 kilometers in altitude, whereas the others are geostationary systems located 36,000 kilometers above the equator. The lower altitude of the O3b’s MEO satellites allow them to relay signals with significantly less lag time, or latency, than geostationary systems. U.S. military officials have touted the benefits of low-latency systems as forces increasingly rely on satellites to support so-called enterprise applications that often are intolerant of signal delays.

SES’ O3b MEO constellation currently consists of 16 satellites, with four more slated to launch next year and seven next-generation O3b mPower spacecraft slated to begin launching in 2021.

“SES continues to enhance our O3b MEO constellation to provide fiber-like services to multiple U.S. government customers at its 17 sites worldwide,” said Peter Hoene, President and Chief Executive Officer of Reston, Va.-based SES Space and Defense, that exclusively serves US government customers. “In combination with SES’ geostationary satellites, O3b MEO provides connectivity that is flexible, reliable and resilient.”

Air Force Devoted to Industry Partnerships
Air Force Lt. Gen. John F. Thompson, commander of the service’s Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC), which oversees the acquisition of most U.S. military space systems, said a just-announced SMC reorganization will help ensure that commercial capabilities are appropriately integrated into the overall military space architecture. As part of the reorganization, unveiled by Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson in a keynote speech here April 17, the service is creating a “chief architect” position to consider the space enterprise as a whole, rather than its individual component parts.

“Our portfolio architect that Secretary Wilson also mentioned will have an office completely devoted to partnerships to ensure that we keep those connections and put together the best space systems that we possibly can,” Thompson told reporters at a Symposium press conference April 19.

The SMC reorganization comes amid continued debate over whether the Air Force is properly structured to address its current and future challenges in space.

In a speech to a government affairs breakfast at the Symposium co-sponsored by the Space Foundation and SES Space and Defense, Doug Loverro, former U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy, said that during the 1960s and 1970s, the service did a great job of cultivating internal expertise on the subject. This was accomplished not through a formal structure but by allowing Air Force officers to build on their space knowledge as they moved to different and progressively higher positions, both within the service and at other agencies like the NRO and NASA.

That wholistic space cadre development was lost via what Loverro called “a long and disconnected series of unfortunate events,” in which the Air Force unwittingly created bureaucratic barriers between space operations and acquisition personnel and hindered the career advancement of space professionals. While he stopped short of advocating a quasi-independent Space Corps, as some stakeholders have advocated, he said the space enterprise might benefit through formal structures designed to enhance the development of career space professionals.

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What we heard was that the military and the rest of the federal government were well aware of the benefits of hosted payloads, but concerns about risk and issues related to culture across agencies and military branches were impeding adoption.

But the light at the end of the tunnel does currently appear to be an enormous, burning beacon that’s much closer and more attainable than it ever has been in the not-so-distant past. That’s because many of the government decision makers in attendance were tirelessly working to champion hosted payloads, and made powerful statements about them being incorporated into future military and government satellite plans moving forward.

The timing for increased hosted payload adoption couldn’t be better. That’s because another common discussion at this year’s Summit focused on a huge problem that the military is going to face in the future. A problem that hosted payloads could help the military overcome – securing and protecting satellites in space.

Space – no longer the ultimate high ground
The protection of satellite networks and capabilities is a relatively new challenge facing our military. A fact that was emphasized by Dr. David A. Hardy, the Associate Deputy Undersecretary of the Air Force (Space), when he said, “We historically viewed space as the ultimate high ground – a place where our adversaries couldn’t attack us.”

But that invulnerability in space is gone. Space is an increasingly contested environment. Today, both government and commercial spacecraft face obstacles that they never faced before.

First, there’s the sheer number of objects in space, which is only going to increase as the cost of satellites and launch continues to decline. Each new satellite that is launched creates increased congestion and raises the probability of a collision in space. This was a popular topic of discussion at the Summit, the focus of an entire keynote discussion, and I’ll be discussing it in an upcoming post on the GovSat Report.

Then there are the issues that military satellites face with jamming, interference and direct kinetic attacks on satellites. These are all capabilities that our adversaries have, and can use to neutralize our satellite infrastructure – which is widely known to be a significant tactical advantage to our military.

With satellite communications so essential to activities in theater and our warfighter, it’s essential that satellites are protected in this new, contested environment. And if a satellite is targeted for jamming or kinetic attach, it’s equally essential that the capabilities it empowers aren’t lost. According to Dr. Hardy, “We need to build an overall DoD satellite architecture that is resilient, in that it maintains performance even if it is attacked.”

Hosted payloads and COMSATCOM as keys to resiliency
We know that our adversaries have been testing their capabilities for launching kinetic attacks against satellites. It’s no longer a question of “if” we’ll have to conduct military operations in situations where our satellite infrastructure is attacked or compromised – it’s a question of “when.”

Understanding the new risks to our satellites, the DoD is now looking at COMSATCOM services, small sats and hosted payloads as a potential way to increase its resiliency in these circumstances. According to Dr. Hardy, “(The) promise of increased capacity and hosted payloads in GEO – and small sats in LEO – provides opportunities to increase resiliency.”

How they accomplish that is very simple. By utilizing a combination of satellites and satellite services – including COMSATCOM capacity, hosted military payloads on commercial satellites and small sats in LEO or MEO orbits – for military operations, the DoD can effectively disaggregate their satellite communications network and make it significantly harder for adversaries to deny satellite communications and capabilities.

In this situation, it would be extremely difficult to target any one satellite to compromise the military’s satellite communications and capabilities. Even if a satellite was compromised, it would effectively fail to deny those mission-critical services.

Also, should an adversary look to disable a hosted payload or COMSATCOM service on a commercial satellite, they would effectively be targeting far more than a single nation’s military. They could be cutting off essential communications services for other nations, and maybe even their own citizens.

As Dr. Hardy stated, “A more proliferated architecture that is not all military only can increase capability and resilience.”

There is a significant groundswell of support for increased adoption of COMSATCOM services and hosted payloads across the federal government and military. Their ability to drastically increase the government’s access to space is one of the reasons for this support, but the need to protect satellites may be just as important.

It’s a new age in space, and we’re not alone in orbit. The speakers at the Hosted Payload and Small Sat Summit made it abundantly clear that we need to protect our satellites and satellite capabilities, and hosted payloads could play a role in accomplishing that mission.

For additional information on hosted payloads and the ways in which they can help the federal government by increasing access to space and cutting costs, click on the following resources:

• Whitepaper: What is a Hosted Payload?
• Hosted Payloads Infographic
• PODCAST: Nicole Robinson on the benefits of hosted payloads for NOAA and other federal agencies
• PODCAST: CHIRP team discusses program and benefits of hosted payloads

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So, if the public sector – the federal government, government agencies, branches of the military and the intelligence community – know that hosted payloads can deliver significant savings and benefits, why aren’t they using them?

That question was one of many at the crux of the discussions at this year’s Hosted Payload and Small Sat Summit –an annual event hosted by Access Intelligence which focuses on the uses of hosted payloads and small satellites to accomplish government missions.

This year’s Summit brought together an interesting mix of industry leaders from satellite manufacturers and satellite communications (SATCOM) providers, government decision makers and program managers from exciting small sat and hosted payload projects across the federal government. The keynote addresses and panel discussions at this year’s event did an excellent job of illustrating the state of hosted payload adoption across the government, and the organizational challenges keeping hosted payloads from seeing even broader adoption.

Hosted Payload Alliance Weighs in on Payload Adoption

Early in the conference, Al Tadros, the Chair of the Hosted Payload Alliance and VP of Civil and DoD Business for Space Systems Loral (SSL), laid out some of the many benefits of hosted payloads to attendees. In Al’s words, these benefits include, “Increased access to space, lower launch cost and risk, more resilient architectures resulting from hosting on commercial satellites, operational flexibility of having access on a large number of commercial satellites and payload-focused acquisitions rather than the full-on, purpose built, free-flyer missions that the government regularly uses.”

Although all of those benefits are alluring for the military and federal government, the ability for hosted payloads to dramatically increase the government’s access to space is potentially the most compelling. The concept of hosting payloads on commercial spacecraft makes each new satellite that is launched by the COMSATCOM industry an opportunity to expand the government and military’s presence in space.

According to Al, “In 2015…there were 65 commercial launches, which added to the 1500 satellites in operation – half of which are commercial satellites and 37 percent of which are commercial communications satellites. This is a huge percentage of what’s in space, and the access to this is the promise of what hosted payloads can provide.”

But even this ability to increase access to space has yet to drive hosted payload programs across the military. And that may have more to do with what the military is comfortable with, and less to do with what is best for the military and its mission.

History of DoD Hosted Payload Initiatives

One of the first keynote addresses at the event was delivered by Dr. David A. Hardy, the Associate Deputy Undersecretary of the Air Force (Space), who explored the history of the DoD’s space initiatives and illustrated how they impact space policy today.
As Dr. Hardy explained, the Air Force has historically faced limited options and opportunities for launch. These limited launch options were extremely expensive, so the Air Force responded by building massive, monolithic space craft that would deliver immense capability while maximizing the return on their launch investment. And the high total cost – coupled with the mission-critical nature – of the satellites being launched made the Air Force understandably risk adverse and inclined to try and control everything.

As Dr. Hardy stated, “We in the DoD space community like to keep control over our assets.”

Much of this sentiment about facing and handling risk, and demanding to own every part of the process and all parts of a mission, were echoed in a later presentation by Major James Crane, the Deputy Branch Chief of the Air Force’s Hosted Payload Office, within the Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC).

“I would like to acknowledge the frustration that you all have with how quickly the government has adopted hosted payloads,” Major Crane shared. “It’s not really a technical issue. It really comes down to how the government deals with risk. We also have frustration from the side of the government with our inability to adopt hosted payloads.”

Major Crane’s position and office are, in themselves, a positive step forward to overcoming this frustration and increasing hosted payload adoption across the government. His office’s mission is to effectively serve as a liaison between industry and government entities to help identify hosted payload opportunities and bring payloads together with COMSATCOM providers that can host them.

Utilizing an IDIQ contract called HoPS (known as the Air Force’s Hosted Payload Solutions Program), Major Crane can appropriately match government projects with comparable hosting opportunities. Unfortunately, this faces its own limitations and challenges. The agencies that are most likely to embrace hosted payloads are also those least likely to have budget dollars to afford them.

According to Major Crane, “The people that can best accept a lot of risk are often the scientific community and scientific exploration missions. Unfortunately, while they can most accept the risk, they’re also the organizations and projects with the tightest budgets.”

Regardless of these challenges, signs are pointing towards hosted payload adoption increasing in the coming years.

According to Major Crane, “I think we are seeing at SMC some movement towards ensuring that the hosted payload concept is being included in all AoAs moving forward. There is a wideband AoA coming up in the near future. The MILSATCOM AoAs will include commercial hosting. We’re working closely with the offices that develop the concepts for the AoAs [to ensure hosting is included.]”

Hosted Payload Office Looks Towards a More Collaborative Future

Hosted payload adoption will only increase as the DoD and the COMSATCOM industry continue to work more closely together. The military has been historically guarded when working with industry, but they’re learning to work more closely with the private sector from organizations that have historically been extremely collaborative. In fact, the ongoing TEMPO program – which includes NASA and the Air Force working together on a hosted payload opportunity – has been a learning process for the Air Force.

As Major Crane shared, “There is a paradigm at SMC with how we interact with industry. Interacting with NASA and seeing how they interact with industry as we’re executing this TEMPO effort has been really eye-opening for us in the Hosted Payload Office. And we’re starting to see that the way that we’re implementing acquisitions is overly constraining, and that we do it to ourselves. That has been a very interesting revelation.”

Ultimately, the benefits of hosted payloads are staggering. Their ability to increase access to space, slash the cost of military space missions and fundamentally shift the way the military approaches satellite and spacecraft acquisitions is simply too important to let concerns about risk and control keep hosted payloads on the ground.

As Dr. Hardy said, “I feel that [keeping control over our assets] is an outmoded concept…We are looking at hosted payloads and they WILL be a part of our future architecture.”

For additional information on hosted payloads and the ways in which they can help the federal government by increasing access to space and cutting costs, click on the following resources:

• Whitepaper: What is a Hosted Payload?
• Hosted Payloads Infographic
• PODCAST: Nicole Robinson on the benefits of hosted payloads for NOAA and other federal agencies
• PODCAST: CHIRP team discusses program and benefits of hosted payloads

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