Over the past few weeks, Intelsat has reached some significant milestones that have moved the company ever closer to providing a much wider range of services to the firm's commercial and government customers who operate almost anywhere in the world.
The most recent development was the launch of the newest Intelsat EpicNG satellite, Intelsat 35e. The satellite’s Ku-band services include customized high-power wide beams for mobility and government applications in the Caribbean, trans-Europe to Africa, and on the African continent.
Government customers operating on Intelsat's first two EpicNG satellites, Intelsat 29e and Intelsat 33e, have reported considerable gains in throughput with the powerful EpicNG spot beams when compared to using wide-beam satellites.
One customer testing on Intelsat 29e determined that throughput on this terrestrial platform was three to five times higher than on traditional widebeam satellites and exceeded the performance of comparable antennas using the U.S. government’s WGS satellites.
The higher throughput allows for more applications to be run simultaneously, including secure and non-secure email, chat services, secure voice over IP, and secure video teleconferencing.
In addition, customers tell the company that the greater throughput will allow for a critical common operational picture to be seamlessly shared across units that are geographically dispersed across the battlefield.
Earlier in June, Intelsat partner OneWeb passed two major milestones that moved the company's ability to offer a new broadband capability to government customers a step closer.
The first was approval from the Federal Communications Commission of OneWeb’s application to operate in the United States. The second was the start of OneWeb satellite production at an Airbus factory in Toulouse, France.
Even though Intelsat and OneWeb have terminated their proposed merger, the company remains a key OneWeb partner. In fact, the company is currently building out OneWeb’s satellite control center in space subleased from Intelsat at the company's McLean, Virginia, headquarters.
In the company's collaboration with OneWeb, integrated GEO/LEO services are being developed that will enable customers to have critical fixed and mobile communications anywhere on the globe, from the polar regions to the most remote, isolated terrain.
Production of OneWeb’s 700+ satellites started in late June in France and should eventually reach a pace of three satellites per day, according to Airbus.
OneWeb and Airbus broke ground in March for a second satellite production factory near the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the majority of the satellites will be built. OneWeb expects to launch their first satellites in April of 2018, with 300 satellites projected to be in orbit by the end of 2020 and more than 600 a year later.
The addition of OneWeb’s low-latency LEO broadband capacity to Intelsat’s global fleet of GEO satellites will offer government customers a level of coverage never before available.
The U.S. Department of Defense has submitted a budget request for FY 2018 that includes significant investments in space capabilities. While investments into commercial satellite capacity represent only a small fraction of the DoD’s overall space investment, the Pentagon’s continued efforts to evaluate how services like Intelsat and OneWeb can play future roles in the government’s communications systems architecture is encouraging. These efforts are critical to informing the ongoing Wideband Communications Services Analysis of Alternatives and the DoD’s future wideband architecture.
In addition, Intelsat partner Kymeta shipped their first flat-panel antennas in June. The Kymeta design uses electronic beam steering instead of mechanical parts to follow a satellite across the sky.
Such a design is critical for connecting to OneWeb’s constellation of LEO satellites that require connections to pass from satellite to satellite as they orbit the Earth every 100 minutes. The Kymeta flat panel antenna design is also a game changer for a broad range of airborne, maritime, and ground-mobile applications.
Intelsat is also partnering with other electronically-steerable antenna developers to bring a product to market that is ideally suited for in-flight communications from aircraft carrying top government officials. These flat, light-weight antennas are also suitable for use on the smaller class unmanned aircraft systems that government agencies could use more widely for non-military operations in the United States and elsewhere around the world.
Combining the power of the Intelsat’s EpicNG constellation with the Low Earth Orbit (LEO) OneWeb satellites and the flat-panel antenna technology promises to provide customers with a wider range of choices and applications in the coming years.
Pentagon Move to Reorganize Acquisition Is the Correct Step
In a plan recently sent to Congress, the Pentagon calls for eliminating one leadership position and creating three others as part of its effort to reorganize the bureaucracy that oversees the acquisition of military technologies, reports National Defense Magazine.
The acquisition process as it currently exists is a pain point for the U.S. military and the commercial entities with whom it does business. Air Force General John E. Hyten, Commander, U.S. Strategic Command, recently pointed to the broken acquisition process as the reason for the military’s struggle to keep up with U.S. adversaries. He argues that slow and onerous procurement processes stunt innovation and put the U.S. military at a disadvantage.
As part of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act, lawmakers mandated a reorganization of the bureaucracy in the hopes of speeding up the acquisition process and reducing the risk of cost overruns. The Pentagon delivered its document, “Restructuring the Department of Defense Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Organization and Chief Management Officer Organization,” to Congress on August 1.
Under the Pentagon’s plan, the position of undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics will be eliminated, and three new positions will be added. The responsibilities previously held by the undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics will be divided between two new positions: an undersecretary of defense for research and engineering, and an undersecretary of defense for acquisition and sustainment.
According to the report, the undersecretary for research and engineering will focus on “closing the gap on current and emerging threats, and on driving the disruptive innovation that provides the measure of technical dominance in specific warfare areas and on the scale and timeline called for [by the national defense strategy.]”
Meanwhile, the undersecretary for acquisition and sustainment will focus on “improving major defense program performance and reducing lifecycle costs to free up resources for further investment,” reports Jon Harper for National Defense Magazine.
The third position created by the Pentagon’s plan is a chief management officer, who will be responsible for improving the department’s business operations and reducing its costs.
While the Pentagon’s plan has the potential to add bureaucracy, we hope the reorganization will lead to further reform. Not only would the U.S. military benefit from technological advances made by the commercial sector, but it could see additional cost savings beyond the acquisition process itself.
Case in point: An Air Force and Defense Information Systems Agency Pathfinder program to test acquisition models yielded data showing long-term leasing of commercial SATCOM “saved (DoD) approximately 40 percent vs. annual spot leasing,” according to Gen. Hyten.
The reorganization of the Department of Defense Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Organization is a step in the right direction, but it’s only a small step. The people filling the Pentagon’s new positions have a big challenge before them. Fortunately, commercial entities stand ready to support them.
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The preceding articles are courtesy of Intelsat General's SatCom Frontier infosite and editorial team.