New generation of commercial satellites to benefit military.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew

* Commercial satellite communications providers are in the process of launching a new generation of high-capacity spacecraft that will be a boon for their military customers.

Government users will have a variety of services to choose from with throughput measured in gigabytes rather than megabytes and narrower, steerable spot beams that will help prevent enemy jamming, all with no development costs to taxpayers.

"Industry is certainly leading the way with tremendous capacity--terabytes in orbit--and if DoD isn't in line to access that, that is a problem," Joe Vanderporten, director of the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center's Pathfinder office, said at a recent Washington Space Business Roundtable panel discussion on comsat providers and the military.

The big providers such as Eutelsat, Intelsat General, SES Government Solutions and Inmarsat for the past 15 years have been selling their services to the military on year-long contracts because demand has far outpaced military satellite communications capacity. Now, they are asking that their relationship to the Defense Department evolve into more of a partnership.

One of the new satellite constellations is the O3b Network, which is operated by SES Government Solutions. At a demonstration day in Bristow, Virginia, company representatives showed how they could set up a high-capacity satellite link within hours using equipment and dishes that fit into a few easily transportable boxes.

The system connects to eight satellites that are constantly moving in a medium orbit--about 4,100 miles above the Earth--as opposed to standard communications satellites, which operate in fixed geostationary orbits at about 22,000 miles, said P. Glenn Smith, vice president of business development for SES Government Solutions.

The closer proximity means a much lower latency compared to satellites that are in fixed orbits. Smith said speeds were comparable to undersea fiber-optic cables. The satellites have steerable spot beams that cover smaller swaths of about 430 miles wide. Previous beams might cover entire continents.

That gives the system some inherent protection against jamming, Smith said.

The military operates two types of communications satellites. One is the Advanced EHF, highly protected satellites designed to work in the event of a nuclear war. Commercial satellite providers, whose main customers are telecommunications companies and television broadcasters, have no need to build battle-hardened...