Space on demand: Air Force weighs options to meet skyrocketing bandwidth demand.

• Author: Wagner, Breanne
• Position: Space Technology - Cover story

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COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. -- The ever-increasing bandwidth demands on military networks have created new pressures on the Air Force and the space industry to address these needs.

Officials worry that current satellite communications systems are not adequate to satisfy the growing requirements. They also acknowledge that they must make improvements soon because next-generation systems will not be available for many years.

"Everything I have seen shows [there is] probably double the amount of legitimate demand versus the capacity that we have available," says Lt. Gen. Michael Hamel, commander of space and missile systems center at Air Force Space Command.

"We're getting the job done but it's not being done in a way that meets user needs," Hamel says.

Independent analysts estimate that U.S. government demand for satellite bandwidth has nearly doubled, from approximately 7 gigabits per second (Gbps) in 2003 to 12 Gbps in 2007, according to Northern Sky Research, a telecommunications market research and consulting firm. Analysts expect the demand to reach 16 Gbps by 2012.

For the military, it is not just about more bandwidth but also high levels of protection from cyber-threats. Commercial companies today provide 80 percent of military sat-com, which raises questions about how secure they really are, Hamel tells reporters at the Space Foundation's national space symposium here.

"Commercial satellite options provide a readily available source of bandwidth, but it also has downsides in that it is not as well protected."

He adds that by using commercial systems, the military has to compete for limited bandwidth with other users, such as the media.

Lt. Gen. Kevin Campbell, commander of the Army Space and Missile Defense Command, agrees that secure sat-corn is the primary shortfall.

Hamel says the military is looking to dramatically increase secure sat-com capacity when it deploys the Transformational-Satellite, or T-Sat.

But budget and schedule uncertainties have called into question the future of T-Sat, prompting the Defense Department to seek out less complex, near-term alternatives.

T-Sat is designed to transfer secure video, voice and other data through laser links, rather than radio frequencies, with thousands of times more capacity than currently available systems. With onboard digital processing and Internet protocol routing, the system will be able to connect users anywhere in the world, officials say.

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