Thank you for reading our blog, SatCom Frontier. If you would like to receive future blogs from us via email, please provide your email address below. You can also read our blogs on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.
Last week SATCOM Frontier spoke with Christopher Baugh, President of Northern Sky Research. We spoke with him on some of the most pressing issues facing the satellite communications market today.
Here’s the direct link to the registration page of the free webinar Chris mentions below.
SF: First off, please give our readers a snapshot of Northern Sky Research
Commercial SATCOM providers can sometimes come off as being a little whiny. After all, the need for bandwidth by military users continues to surge, and the military has no choice but to rely on commercial SATCOM to support the warfighter. Why don’t we all just pipe down, and appreciate the business?
Everyone in Washington realizes that a new budgetary climate has taken hold for defense expenditures. Difficult decisions will need to be made in the 2013 Defense budget, to be released this month. According to a recent Government Executive/ Nextgov article, there are plans for cutting $487 Billion over the next decade.
Each year, the Government Technology Research Alliance (GTRA) hosts its annual GOVTek Awards program, which honors government and industry leaders for their contributions to the IT community, their country and the ever-evolving government technology world.
There is no doubt that a new budgetary climate has taken hold for space operations, as discussed by IGC President Kay Sears last week. That said, there are also clear trends that point to bandwidth demands GROWING as American troops pull out of current engagements around the world, rather than decreasing. This will be due to a growing emphasis on special operations and more UAV flights, which consume huge amounts of SATCOM bandwidth.
It is no surprise that the issue of space debris has risen to popular culture status with the launch of a new 3D IMAX movie called ‘Space Junk.’ As we have highlighted before on this blog, there is vast world of space debris, as well as an abundance of satellites and other assets, floating around in near space that has caused a dangerous level of overcrowding.
In my role as the head of Intelsat General, I’m constantly in touch with our customers. We conduct a frank discourse on how can we help them meet their missions in space, overcome obstacles, and best utilize commercial SATCOM. As I wrote back in July, an incredible 90% of in-theater military communications rides on commercial space networks.
DARPA, the government agency that invented the Internet, announced a very innovative program last week. As reported in InformationWeek magazine, the agency wants to reuse the antennas of satellites retired from geostationary earth orbit (GEO)potentially leading the way to salvage hardware from “300 billion worth of retired satellites.”
A lot has changed in the satellite industry in recent years. VSAT sizes are now measured in inches rather than feet. IP data rates are stated not in kilobits per second but in megabits per second. Customers now talk of “putting a micro terminal on everything smoking”— meaning ships, land-based vehicles and aircraft — to provide true satellite communications on the move.
It’s pretty cool to think about the power of satellite communications (SATCOM), and the advantages it provides for our military customers. What’s definitely not cool is the fact that interoperability issues between different generations of UHF equipment can prevent those advantages from reaching the warfighter in the field.
For the U.S. Navy, providing a worldwide communications capability is a highly complex task that requires literally thousands of discrete components. From satellites to transponders, antennas, RF transmit and receive equipment, terrestrial links, and baseband equipment, maintaining configuration and control of all of these electronic parts requires a complex information infrastructure composed of databases and servers.
Our nation’s defense systems require the most cutting-edge solutions in the areas of end-to-end satellite and terrestrial communications. In order to achieve this, the U.S. Navy needed to be able to maximize use of its leased bandwidth to aid in overall mission support.
As the economics of providing Ka-band satellite communication services drive several new satellite deployments around the world, customers have been asking the question: Ka-band versus Ku-band -- which is better? The answer to that question depends on the customer’s needs and the trade-offs that can be accepted.
They say time flies when you love your work. So here I am writing a recap of 2011, a very busy and successful year for Intelsat General.
We’ve continued to play a key role in supporting the global reach of the U.S. military and its NATO allies in 2011, providing solutions ranging from UAV data transfer to television signals to U.S. troops around the globe. Satellite capacity provided by Intelsat General and other commercial companies continued to make up the lion’s share of bandwidth used by the military in 2011, supporting the net-centric superiority of the American military.
The National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC) was established over 25 years ago to provide the President with the best possible counsel in areas of national security and emergency preparedness. In 2011 the NSTAC has recommended that the U.S. government investigate leasing commercial satellite capacity to be on stand-by in case of a national emergency that damages the nation’s or the Washington region’s communications infrastructure.
