WASHINGTON — The military’s demand for satellite web was a subject of interest last week on the U.S. Army’s largest annual trade show.
“What we heard is the necessity for resiliency and agility,” said Ray Lindenmayer, director of business development at Intelsat, a world satellite operator.
With the Army because the military’s biggest user of satellite services, providers like Intelsat are desperate to meet the demand, especially for improving connectivity for mobile users.
The Army wants seamless access to satellites in various orbits, so if one network goes down, others immediately take over. “They don’t want single points of failure,” Lindenmayer told .
“The power to decentralize their command and control is a giant deal, and that requires communications to support it,” he said.
Recent initiative: ‘multi orbit modem’
The issue for global network users just like the Army is that satellite systems don’t confer with one another like cellular services, and don’t all run on the identical piece of hardware.
So the Army is trying workarounds to get easier access to satellite web providers operating in low, medium and geostationary orbits.
The Army’s Program Executive Office for Enterprise Information Systems (PEO EIS) recently announced plans to upgrade satellite modems at regional hubs that manage network traffic in order that they are compatible with multiple carriers.
Under a separate effort, the Army Combat Capabilities Development Command is doing market research on a multi-orbit modem for mobile users. Industry white papers were due in late August.
“This modem, in a single box, is presupposed to have the opportunity to confer with all of the military and business satellites,” Lindenmayer said. “It’s like a Swiss army knife for satellite services.”
Intelsat is working with other satellite operators and hardware suppliers to place together an answer for a multi-orbit modem, Lindenmayer said.
The modem needs to be compatible with an Army “plug and play” interface adapter referred to as CMOSS that’s installed on Humvees and other battlefield vehicles. A CMOSS box has card slots so it could actually be configured to run communications, navigation, command-and-control, and other radio services.
The multi-orbit modem requires a contractor to function an integrator — in a position to adapt the proprietary network software and protocols from different providers and create a modem that’s compatible with the CMOSS standard so it could actually slide into the slot, he said.
“We brought in a bunch of partners and we try to place together essentially the most simplified solution for that box,” Lindenmayer said.
Intelsat provides communications services from geostationary satellites and resells services from low Earth orbit networks like Starlink and OneWeb. The corporate is also considering constructing a constellation in medium Earth orbit to enhance capability.
“Our corporation is pivoting to a multi-orbit mentality. So once we see a proposal just like the multi-orbit modem, it’s consistent with what we’re doing,” he added.
Difficulties integrating services
In keeping with the Army’s request for white papers, the multi-orbit modem has to have the opportunity to speak over multiple satellites and orbits concurrently. “A systems integrator might want to work with multiple waveform vendors in porting their proprietary solutions into the multi-orbit modem.”
If satellite operators agreed to common standards, said Lindenmayer, there wouldn’t be a necessity to construct a posh modem to plug into the CMOSS box. “You’ll only have one piece of hardware and all of the software waveforms would work,” he added. The problem is that corporations closely guard their technology and don’t wish to share their proprietary waveforms in a software based method “without the federal government paying for it.”
Integrated services would make it easier to cope with emergencies comparable to when there’s a network outage and the military needs to maneuver users to other networks quickly.
Making that switch today can take weeks, said Lindenmayer. If an Army gateway site lost its connection to a military satcom network and desired to move communications over to Intelsat, it will have to modify all its equipment to have the opportunity to confer with Intelsat’s gateway.
That changeover is finished through a process called Satellite Access Request (SAR) and Gateway Access Request (GAR). Getting the obligatory approvals and equipment to do this could take 30 to 60 days.
The Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit is working with several business corporations to determine ways to attach networks that operate in numerous orbits and frequencies but concepts are only within the early phases.
Intelsat is an investor in an organization spun off from Google, called Aalyria, that’s working with DIU on the hybrid network project. Aalyria developed network management software that links low Earth orbit and geostationary satellites. Intelsat recently announced plans to work with Aalyria to ascertain a bi-directional optical ground and space network to transfer data at high speeds.
Fully managed satcom services
The Army is also experimenting with fully outsourced satcom services.
The Army’s Program Executive Office for Command, Control, Communications-Tactical (PEO C3T) on Sept. 29 announced it chosen Intelsat and SES Space & Defense for a pilot program called “satcom as a managed service.”
“The intent of the pilot is to tell decisions on the Army’s potential use of commercially leased satcom network services that may be flexible and tailorable, versus procuring, fielding, sustaining and modernizing the equipment in house,” said the PEO C3T office.
The worth of the contracts awarded to Intelsat and SES weren’t disclosed. They include six months of end-to-end managed subscription services to support connectivity to business teleports across the globe, with options to increase services for a further six months.
It is a latest business model, Lindenmayer said. The Army traditionally has had one organization that buys the hardware, and one other that procures the service, “and sometimes they didn’t all mesh together,” he said. “So the concept is to offer a one stop shop, they usually’re testing that concept to see in the event that they could make it work.”