May 14, 2024
ALEXANDRIA, Va. — It’s a digital world. Communication, observation, navigation, even warfare occur at the level of 1s and 0s within a virtualized or software-defined environment.
Military leaders are seeking to secure this new world by leveraging the flexibility, scalability and resilience inherent to digital transformation.
Most recently, offices within the U.S. Army requested a series of demonstrations to show the viability of virtual ground infrastructure for military satellite communication (MILSATCOM). The demonstrations occurred across multiple orbits (LEO and MEO) using multiple satellite operators (Telesat and SES) with secure links established through software-defined ground platforms hosted both in the cloud and on generic servers.
The Case for a Small Footprint
Unlike traditional satellite communications architectures, a virtual satcom network is not limited to a single physical form factor. Software-defined architectures unlock various configurations with a much smaller physical footprint at the gateway than analog systems. In the context of MILSATCOM, this can mean the difference between transporting hundreds or thousands of pounds of purpose-built equipment in theater or deploying a small server rack, remote terminal and an antenna.
In conflict, satellite connectivity is often the only tether a soldier has to the outside world. Local infrastructure is either nonexistent or not secure, so MILSATCOM is deployed to ensure critical communications. Virtualizing components of the MILSATCOM ground segment (e.g. virtual modems, virtual channelizers, virtual combiners, virtual switches, etc.) and running those in a software or cloud environment, minimizes the footprint of satellite communications in the field. Combined with on-orbit advances, digital ground can also enable a level of scalability and speed that represents a potential revolution in military communications.
Consider the use of UAVs, which have proven invaluable in recent conflicts, including Afghanistan, Ukraine and Israel. “How do you take that tactical video and give it back to a strategic UAV operator or operation center with real-time intelligence that’s valid and of good enough quality that they can make decisions?” asked Philip Harlow, President of Telesat Government Solutions. “That’s where we’re moving.”
Linking to Telesat in LEO
In a demonstration for the U.S. Army Program Executive Office for Command, Control, Communications Tactical (PEO C3T), Telesat, Cobham and Kratos tested the basic functionality of a virtual satcom system by establishing a link to an overhead satellite and transmitting video. Telesat provided the terminal and time on LEO 3, a prototype of the upcoming Pathfinder satellites that will comprise the Telesat Lightspeed constellation. A Cobham tracker antenna was outfitted with a Kratos digitizer and used for the handoff. The ground segment was essentially a half-rack server running the Kratos OpenSpace virtual ground system which orchestrated a series of Kubernetes-based containerized network functions (CNF).
“All of what we built was based on open, available carrier, waveform and data processing standards. So, none of this is proprietary,” said Aaron Fletchersmith, Lead Systems Engineer at Kratos. “That means all the inputs and the output from this system could potentially be interchangeable with existing MILSATCOM equipment that’s already on site.”
At a time of budgetary constraints, the U.S. Department of Defense has emphasized the importance of acquiring new technologies and capabilities without investing to replace existing, functional equipment.
Similarly, all military service branches have put a premium on multi-orbit capabilities, where a single ground station can connect with spacecraft at different altitudes run by different operators. This was also demonstrated in the virtual satcom test. Virtual or software-defined modems hosted locally on a server (in the case of the LEO demo) or in the cloud allow operators to not only switch from one waveform to another but also to bring that waveform to multiple orbits.
“From our perspective, it was very straightforward technically,” Harlow said of Telesat providing the forward and return links for the demo. “But conceptually it validated the entire concept of the multi-orbit capability. From that perspective, it was pretty significant.”
SES in MEO and the Cloud
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Read the full article: https://www.kratosspace.com/constellations/articles/why-the-us-army-is-pursuing-software-defined-multi-orbit-milsatcom
