Via Satellite | June 18, 2025
ARLINGTON, Va. — Satcom leaders at the Department of Defense Chief Information Officer (DoD CIO) are pushing to modernize user terminals and teleports, leaning into software-defined architectures to make use of military, commercial and allied satcom networks.
“In satcom, I think we need to have that 3GPP moment,” said Mike Dean, director of Command, Control and Communications (C3) Infrastructure at DoD CIO, referring to the comprehensive global standards that made it possible for mobile devices to roam seamlessly across cellular networks.
“I think we need to do the same thing with satcom terminals,” Dean said Tuesday at MILSATCOM USA. “They’ve got to be light, they’ve got to be inexpensive, they’ve got to be software-defined, so we can put the different waveforms and service-provided networks in them.”
Dean’s office is responsible for the digital transformation of legacy C3 capabilities, which includes modernizing ground infrastructure and supporting satcom user terminal upgrades across the military branches.
While the space segment has undergone significant modernization, there has been a tendency to underestimate the importance of the ground segment, exemplified by the lag in user equipment for the narrowband Mobile User Objective System (MUOS). Dean described user terminals as “the tail that wags the dog,” noting it can currently take 7 to 15 years to integrate new terminals into ships, submarines or aircraft “until we get to software defined.”
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Read the full article: https://www.satellitetoday.com/government-military/2025/06/18/dod-cio-official-satcom-needs-its-3gpp-moment/
