WASHINGTON — The U.S. Air Drive is gearing up for an illustration subsequent 12 months of a satellite tv for pc communications community that may seamlessly combine government-owned and industrial constellations on a single, safe army terminal.
The demonstration is a key milestone within the Air Drive Analysis Laboratory’s Protection Experimentation Utilizing Business Area Web, or DEUCSI — a program launched in 2018 to discover augmenting army communications by leveraging the rising industrial satellite tv for pc web trade.
The purpose is to offer forces on the bottom, at sea and within the air entry to the mixed bandwidth of the army’s devoted satellites in addition to industrial satellite tv for pc web suppliers like SpaceX’s Starlink.
An illustration flight, slated for 2025, will showcase newly developed communications terminals able to tapping into a number of industrial and army satellite tv for pc constellations on the similar time — a functionality the Pentagon presently lacks.
Safety necessities
Whereas the army already purchases industrial satcom providers, it doesn’t have the power at present to combine these industrial connections into the prevailing satellite tv for pc architectures utilizing a single terminal that meets DoD’s safety and operational necessities, mentioned Ron Fehlen, vp of assured mission networks at L3Harris Applied sciences.
One of many prime contractors on the DEUCSI program, L3Harris has been awarded $170 million in contracts since 2021 to develop multi-orbit satellite tv for pc terminals for plane, cellular floor techniques and stuck floor stations.
The corporate says it’s simply over a 12 months away from flight testing the know-how on a army plane. Beneath its contract with AFRL, L3Harris is producing 23 terminals for fastened floor techniques, two for cellular floor techniques and 5 for plane.
A linchpin of the hybrid community is a modular radio developed by L3Harris known as RASOR, brief for Quickly Adaptable Requirements-compliant Open Radio. It homes modems that join with a number of industrial satellite tv for pc web suppliers in addition to devoted army networks.
Integrating all these totally different modems right into a single radio platform that meets stringent army safety requirements has been an infinite technical problem, Fehlen mentioned. “The modular radio brings collectively waveforms and modems in a versatile open structure that may be routinely up to date with new capabilities,” he mentioned.
L3Harris mentioned RASOR is operational and has been offered to prospects for growth actions exterior the DEUCSI program however couldn’t focus on additional.
Future addition of latest providers
A key requirement for the DEUCSI terminals is an open structure that permits new industrial satellite tv for pc web suppliers to be simply built-in as they arrive on-line sooner or later, Fehlen mentioned. With satellite tv for pc web a booming trade, the army desires the flexibleness to quickly add new constellations which are anticipated to enter the market corresponding to Amazon’s Challenge Kuiper broadband community.
Adam Milner, program supervisor at L3Harris, mentioned the RASOR radio can scale up from three to 12 slots. The considering within the DEUCSI program, he mentioned, is that army forces would purchase these terminals after which get routine software program updates to faucet into the most recent industrial satellite tv for pc web providers very similar to customers do with smartphones.
Along with L3Harris, the Air Drive Analysis Laboratory chosen Northrop Grumman, SES Area & Protection, and Intelsat Basic to develop multi-constellation satcom terminals. Every has subcontracts with a number of industrial satellite tv for pc operators together with Starlink, Viasat, OneWeb and Hughes.
Following the flight demonstration deliberate for late 2025, L3Harris will search to show out the ground-based RASOR terminals in 2026. The long-term goal is to provide a whole household of multi-orbit, multi-constellation terminals for the Military, Navy, Air Drive, Marines and Area Drive.
The Air Drive Analysis Lab mentioned the purpose is to finally transition the applied sciences to operational use throughout the varied army branches within the subsequent two to 3 years if testing goes in keeping with plan.
“Some components of DEUCSI have already transitioned to operational use,” a spokesman for AFRL mentioned in an announcement to SpaceNews. For instance, in earlier phases of DEUCSI, the lab examined single-vendor terminals from SpaceX and from a Hughes/OneWeb staff. “These techniques are actually accessible by means of the U.S. Area Drive Business Satcom Workplace contracts and are in widespread operational use.”
