In July of this year, SES Space & Defense announced that it had been one of the companies chosen for a U.S. Army pilot program. As part of this program, SES Space & Defense was awarded a $3.6 million contract that gave three Army Combatant Commands – NORTHCOM, EUCOM, and USINDOPACOM – access to commercial satellite communications (COMSATCOM) managed services.
While this certainly isn’t the longest or highest dollar-value military satellite contract in history, it could be among the most impactful. That’s because this particular pilot contract marks a new and revolutionary way in which the military is acquiring satellite services that could shape future satellite acquisitions across the military for decades to come.
However, to best understand what is new and different about this contract, we have to understand how the military has traditionally purchased commercial satellite communications (COMSATCOM) solutions.
Separate and kludged together
Historically, the military acquired satellite communications by combining numerous different solutions, capabilities, and services that had to be acquired individually. The military often insisted on owning, operating, and managing as much of that equation as possible to ensure that reliability and security met their stringent requirements.
This meant that the ground segment (teleports, terrestrial circuits, etc.) would be leased and terminals purchased separately from different vendors to meet specific mission requirements. The actual COMSATCOM capacity would then be purchased from a satellite operator – often on the spot market at a financial premium – to provide coverage and connectivity when and where needed.
This approach was often the most complex and expensive one. However, aggregating and integrating the different aspects or elements required to enable satellite communications created other, larger challenges for the military.
“By embracing the SaaMS model, the U.S. Army ensures that it always has access to the latest satellite innovations.”
The first was interoperability. By buying solutions from multiple disparate vendors, the military often faced integration, operational and performance challenges. There were even times when a third party (system integrator) under an additional contract would be brought to the table to make everything function as a comprehensive whole. The interoperability issue for the government, including the challenge of bringing together SATCOM capabilities from multiple disparate vendors and obtaining frequency approvals for the terminals to operate internationally, is all now handled by a satellite as a managed services (SaaMS) contractor.
The other issue involved flexibility and speed. By the time the Army or other service identified a requirement and began the long, arduous acquisition process, the solution that they ultimately acquired was no longer cutting-edge or innovative. This problem became particularly prescient in the past few years, as a new generation of near-peer and peer adversaries arose capable of constantly adding new innovative capabilities to their arsenals.
These challenges made the concept of SATCOM as a managed service so important.
It just works
The “as a Service” model is increasingly popular these days as companies shift from selling a product that their customer owns forever to selling a service that the customer pays a recurring fee.. While this may sound advantageous for the vendor, it’s mutually beneficial. The customer gains increased flexibility and capability, their service is constantly being upgraded with the latest technologies as they’re introduced, and there is incredible peace of mind, knowing that the service is complete and will work when needed.
The COMSATCOM industry began shifting to this business model a few years ago, with satellite providers offering their customers SATCOM as a managed service that simply offered the connectivity they needed, when and where they needed it. Unfortunately, at the time, it appeared that the military was reticent to embrace this new approach to COMSATCOM acquisition.
However, the U.S. Army SaaMS pilot contract is proof that attitudes are changing within the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) toward acquiring SATCOM as a service.
“Instead of being responsible for navigating these interoperability challenges and providing a SATCOM solution for the warfighter that simply works when and where it’s needed, the SaaMS model effectively outsources that responsibility to an industry partner.”
There are numerous reasons why the SaaMS model makes sense for the Department of Defense (DoD) today. The largest is the shifting threat environment. As we’ve discussed, the DoD now faces near-peer, pacing adversaries with advanced capabilities that are always improving. The pace at which these adversaries can innovate and add new capabilities is greater than anything our military has experienced in the past.
The private sector has edged the DoD as the innovator in space – launching exciting new satellite constellations with incredible capacity and extremely low latency. By embracing the SaaMS model, the U.S. Army ensures that it always has access to the latest satellite innovations. The SaaMS model enables the military to take advantage of these innovations immediately by following an end-to-end service-based approach instead of segment procurements.
SaaMS is a transport-agnostic (GEO, MEO, and LEO) approach, and the government needs to just specify service level requirements (service areas, latency, error rates, etc.), types of terminals (fixed, compact flat panel antenna-based portable and manpack, mobile, etc.) and the service delivery times, the rest is service provider’s responsibility. Multi-orbit and multi-band operational capabilities and services are part of the model. The military will have complete transparency and visibility to their network operation using state-of-the-art web tools such as SES Space & Defense’s ICT Portal. The SaaMS model also provides extremely good service lead times, as good as one week for CONUS and two weeks for international, which rarely happens on other acquisitions.
The COMSATCOM industry has made massive strides toward standardization and interoperability in the past few years. However, some hurdles still remain. Instead of being responsible for navigating these interoperability challenges and providing a SATCOM solution for the warfighter that simply works when and where it’s needed, the SaaMS model effectively outsources that responsibility to an industry partner.
“By buying solutions from multiple disparate vendors, the military often faced integration, operational and performance challenges. There were even times when a third party…under an additional contract would be brought to the table to make everything function as a comprehensive whole.”
By embracing the SaaMS model, the Army has effectively acquired a SATCOM solution that should just work when needed. The terrestrial network, terminals, and capacity are all included, and making it all work together is the vendor’s responsibility, not the Army’s. The end result of the SaaMS is a customer experience similar to what American consumers get from their cellphone providers. For a set of services and prices, everything that is needed to communicate is effectively “in the box” and should function to meet the requirements of the mission.
Together, such SaaMS benefits allow the U.S. Army to maintain its end-user needs and technological edge over its adversaries without constantly investing in network infrastructure. .
Only a pilot?
With such significant benefits for the U.S. Army, it might be surprising that this foray into SaaMS is simply a pilot program. Why not go “all in” on SaaMS and make it available across the DoD?
If recent events—including the War in Ukraine—have taught us anything, it’s that SATCOM is an essential tool in modern warfighting. Risk is inherent in any major change or new approach that the military takes. If the DoD had fundamentally changed the way in which it acquires COMSATCOM services and the new approach failed to meet mission requirements, it could have had a significant, negative impact on military operations.
By awarding this pilot contract across limited Combatant Commands, the DoD can effectively assess the SaaMS model and any risks it may create. Should SaaMS meet the military’s requirements, it can be expanded in the future across all services and end users with scalability, flexibility, and agility. Based on early results from the SaaMS pilot, that would appear to be on the horizon.
SaaMS is the future of the satellite industry – offering COMSATCOM providers the ability to offer turnkey SATCOM solutions to their customers that simply work when and where they’re needed. It’s exciting to see the U.S. Army embracing this new approach to satellite acquisition, which will better enable the military to keep a technological edge over its adversaries.