Satellite communications: army exploring new ways to beam streaming video to fast-moving troops.

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ORLANDO, Fla. -- The Army and Marine Corps want battlefield commanders to receive real-time streaming video, voice and other communications beamed down from satellites perched 22,000 miles above Earth.

The problem is that they must receive the data as they're speeding down a highway in a humvee, Bradley Fighting Vehicle or Stryker.

"Imagery is becoming more of a predominant requirement even down to the tactical level than it ever has been in the past," said Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson, special assistant to the secretary of the Army and the service's chief information officer. "Communications on the move is going to become a requirement," he said at the Milcom conference.

The Army and Marines are in the beginning stages of a joint program that will explore the possibility of allowing such communications. The Navy, Coast Guard and Air Force also have similar needs for their small boats and aircraft. Several major defense contractors are lining up to provide solutions. Meanwhile, a new generation of military communications satellites will make space-based mobile communications easier and less expensive.

In November, General Dynamics carried out an engineering test at Fort Dix, New Jersey, to show how communications on the move would work.

Humvees outfitted with terminals sped around the base, transmitted and received data linked to a commercial satellite, said Bill Weiss, vice president of tactical networks at General Dynamics' C4 systems.

The company is the lead contractor for the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (WIN-T). The second stage of that program calls for basic on-the-move broadband networking capability using either satellites or ground-based systems. Sorenson said the Army wants fully secure satcom on the move by the time the program reaches maturity.

Weiss said the technology is mature and can provide basic 256 kilobytes per second video into a vehicle. Initial results from the November tests "look good," he told National Defense, but full reports were pending. Senior Army leaders observed the demonstration, he said.

Vendors pursuing a share of this potential market point out that antennas remain a sticking point.

Daniel Fraley, senior vice president engineering, chief technical officer at Hughes Network Systems, said ensuring that the antenna placed on a vehicle is inconspicuous is crucial. "The guy in the field who has got the antenna, he doesn't want to be noticed ... [That] is very important for the Defense Department."

An antenna capable of two-way communications with a spacecraft in geo-synchronous orbit 22,000 miles above Earth can only get so small, Fraley pointed out. And such communication systems will be reserved for officers. A large dish encased in a plastic bubble makes an inviting target for bad guys.

Weiss said General Dynamics is using its Radome dish, which is encased in a bubble-like dome. One proposal calls for mounting the "dummy" domes without the expensive technology on all vehicles in combat so enemies could not tell where officers are riding, he added.

Other defense companies are working on ways to create lower profile antennas.

Steve Hennessy, business development manager at Harris Corp., said the amount of space on a vehicle is also an issue. A dish on a Bradley or Stryker may not pose a problem, but finding spots on the smaller humvee will be difficult. To receive and transmit signals using today's communications satellites would require dishes about 15- to 16-inches wide.

Fraley said, "The trick with mobility is to have very good signal processing capability ... so you can realize the smallest antenna size possible."

The Transformational-Satellite system (T-Sat) will have such capabilities, and is envisioned as supporting on-the-move communication, but will not reach orbit until 2016, according to the latest estimates.

Meanwhile, the miniaturization revolution that has helped change many military technologies won't be coming to the antenna world, experts said. The laws of physics prohibit such hopes.

Dish apertures can be cut down m size by an inch or two, Hennessy said, but then there is a loss in performance. Weiss pointed put that the less efficient the dish is, the more bandwidth the transmission requires. It is expensive for the Defense Department to lease capacity from commercial satellites. Even when it is employing its own satellites, this uses up scarce bandwidth resources, he added.

Some vendors are offering flat-panel antennas, but there can be problems with connectivity when the truck dips below the line of sight, Fraley said.

A phased-array antenna is one possible solution, but the technology is currently too expensive. It can be placed flat on a surface, though and would not he noticeable. Phased-array antennas use several smaller beams spread out a fiat surface that join to make one. They are currently mounted on a variety of military platforms such as jet fighters.

George Vardakas, director of Army/Air Force communication systems at Raytheon Network Centric Systems, said the Army is looking at outfitting about 1,000 vehicles with satcom on the move. That's not enough to reduce the price of manufacturing highly specialized phased-array antennas.

Hennessy estimated the cost of outfitting a vehicle with such technology at about $100,000 to $150,000 per vehicle. A phased array antenna would roughly double that. Placing them on an aircraft such as an F-22 is a drop in the bucket in terms of cost. Not so on a humvee, he noted.

Raytheon is putting its own dollars into research to bring phased-array prices down. There are "internal efforts within the company to expand that technology to get it into the higher volume markets and do communications," Vardakas said.

T-Sat would use powerful transponders that would allow dishes to shrink to about 12 inches, said Marc Johansen, director of space and intelligence systems at the Boeing Co.

"It's important for the Army to get smaller and smaller dishes because topside space on those vehicles is critical for weapons and other sensors," he told reporters at the conference. The Army's Future Combat Systems' reliance on sensors will make space on top of vehicles scarce, he added. Army plans call for satcom-on-the-move capabilities for FCS vehicles.

"T-Sat is absolutely critical for the Army" for satcom on the move, he said.

Many of Boeing's competitors disagreed. They are prepared to begin providing such services now.

"In my opinion, they're not going to wait for T-Sat," said Hennessy.

Hughes has a global system of satellites it either owns or can use in partnerships with other companies to provide the service, said Fraley. Hughes, after selling its satellite manufacturing business to Boeing in 2000, concentrated on providing commercial services such as satellite television and Internet connections to consumers. It is now marketing similar services to the Defense Department.

"We really didn't have to do much to our commercial product to make it fully capable to support that particular mode of operation," Fraley said. Hughes has undergone a series of operational tests to show the Defense Department it can provide satcom on the move today, he said. It is also pursuing business in the domestic market for first responders and the Coast Guard.

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With a top-of-the-line antenna, and using Ka-band transponders, a terminal could receive 6 to 7 megabytes per second of data, and transmit back to the satellite 1 megabyte, he said. That would allow for streaming video.

Other players include DRS Technologies' DRS Codem Systems Inc. business unit, which demonstrated an X-band satcom-on-the-move system aboard the office for force transformation's Stiletto experimental naval craft last summer. Its terminal sent 3 megabytes per second of video feeds from the boat, which was participating in an exercise off the coast of Virginia, to the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, Calif., according to a company statement

XTAR LLC, a privately owned satellite system, provided the connectivity. The company has two satellites with a footprint reaching roughly from Denver east to Singapore. It is marketing its services exclusively to governments and militaries, said its website.

Boeing, meanwhile, is providing satcom on the move to VIP aircraft in the Air Force so its senior leaders can stay connected during long flights. Its now defunct Spaceways business unit, which was designed to provide Internet connection to commercial airliners, has lived on in an Air Force contract. Spaceways' business plan collapsed in the wake of the post-9/11 airline slump, but the technology works, Boeing officials pointed out.

Aircraft, boats and ground vehicles all have their own sets of problems.

In the end, it's all about maintaining contact with the satellite, said Hennessy.

The pitching and yawing of a small boat, and movement over rough terrain in a vehicle makes a steady connection difficult.

"If you're on 'receive only' and your dish kind of misses, it's no big deal," Hennessy said. The user sees a blip on the screen for a few seconds. When transmitting, if the humvee hits a bump in the road, it sends its signal hurtling out into space where it might be received by another communications satellite. "That's not acceptable," he added.

This makes tracking devices important, particularly in urban landscapes where tall buildings block signals.

Since the Army and Marine Corps expect to be fighting in cities for the foreseeable future, this remains another technological challenge, experts said.

"What's important about that is how fast you regain coverage once you get unblocked," said Fraley. "It's important that you ride through that and maintain your connection to the satellite and the IP contacts."

"The user experience can be very disappointing if you don't recover from those kinds of things quickly," he added

Not all connectivity must be satellite based, Hennessy pointed out.

The WIN-T program is designed to create an on-the-move "meshed" network. If a vehicle drives between tall buildings, it should remain connected as long as it can maintain contact with others.

"If he can see any other vehicle in the network, he's connected," said Hennessy.

Weiss said this "meshing" capability was demonstrated during the Fort Dix test.

Aerostats, unmanned aerial vehicles, or regular aircraft patrolling in the area of operations could also provide on-the-move links, Johansen said, although he said numerous studies have shown that satellites are more cost efficient.

RELATED ARTICLE: Promise of 'Revolution' in satellite communications faces challenges.

ORLANDO, Fla. -- On Oct. 11, the Air Force launched the first of five Wideband Global Satcom spacecraft, marking the first in a series of four constellations that will revolutionize the military's ability to communicate with forces on the ground, Air Force officials have said.

Part of an overarching strategy, the transformational communications architecture, the Defense Department is promising thousands of times more bandwidth by the middle of the next decade.

But as often is the case whenever it comes to the tricky business of space systems, there are technological and bureaucratic hurdles to overcome. And satellite acquisition programs do not enjoy a good reputation after several projects fell behind schedule and exceeded their cost estimates.

The Air Force has reformed satellite acquisition processes by adopting a "block" approach. This involves measured steps deigned to prove new capabilities before the satellite is launched. A Government Accountability Office report released in August generally gave this strategy good marks, however, it warned of an impending budget crunch. The Defense Department's investment for all major space acquisitions is expected to rise over the course of the next three years from $6.3 billion to $9.2 billion, a 46 percent jump, GAO said.

One of the four planned space communications systems, the Transformational-Satellites, better known as T-Sat, may be the first victim of this budget crunch. Defense appropriators slashed its funding for the 2008 cycle.

Maj. Gen. Jeffrey Sorenson, special assistant to the secretary of the Army and the service's chief information officer, said the Air Force has gotten lucky because some of the current communication constellations are surviving beyond their expected lifetimes.

"From an Army perspective, from a joint force perspective, we just can't continue to rely on luck ... We need to maintain schedules," he said.

The following is a look at the four constellations, their capabilities and when they're expected to go into service.

Wideband Global Satcom. In-flight check-outs on the first WGS, formerly known as the Wideband Gapfitler Satellite, are expected to be completed in January. The manufacturer, Boeing Co. will hand over the satellite to the Air Force then. At that moment, it will become the military's highest capacity communications satellite.

Boeing is under contract to build five, with launches scheduled every eight to 10 months.

In a unique arrangement, the Australian military has signed a contract to buy a sixth satellite. This will allow its forces to use one-sixth of the constellations' global capacity from the outset of the program.

Each satellite will have 3 gigabytes per second of capacity, 18 moveable spot beams employing X-and Ka- band transponders with on-board channelizers that will that will allow signals to switch between the two bands. In other words, a signal can be transmitted from an unmanned aerial vehicle to the satellite in Ka-band and relayed to a headquarters in the X-band, said Marc Johansen, director of space and intelligence systems at Boeing Co.

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"This is going to be a major improvement in terms of our wideband communications," he said.

They will replace the aging fleet of defense satellite communications systems III (DSCS III), which has been called the "workhorse" of military communications satellites, but are based on 1980s technology.

The first WGS will have a footprint over the Pacific, reaching roughly from the West Coast of the United States to China. The second spacecraft to follow later this year will cover the Middle East, Johansen said.

Advanced EHF. The first of three advanced EHF satellites, designed to augment, and eventually replace, the current Milstar constellation, is scheduled for launch in late 2008.

The Space and Systems Center in Los Angeles Air Force Base and contractor Lockheed Martin completed systems tests in October that ensured that the spacecraft will be compatible with ground terminals. It will provide data rates up to 8 megabytes per second. The three-satellite constellation will provide 10 times the transmission capacity as the Milstar's five spacecraft, according to Air Force fact sheets.

Advanced EHF will link commanders to ships, submarines, aircraft and ground stations with encrypted, secure communications designed to continue working during a nuclear conflict.

Congress during the last two budget cycles has expressed interest in funding a fourth spacecraft to augment the military's communication capacity as it awaits the development of the T-Sat.

Lt. Gen. Michael Hamel, commander of space and missiles command, said extending the program might cause significant production and engineering challenges. Among the issues is whether the parts would be available since the service only planned for three satellites. "We are looking at how we would go about doing that," he said.

Mobile User Objective System (MUOS). The MUOS satellites, slated for launch in 2010, require new terminals that were scheduled to be developed under the Joint Tactical Radio System. However, JTRS has run into technical setbacks, funding delays and may not exist for several more years.

The Navy, which oversees satellites that use narrowband communications, has not synchronized with the Army the deployment of the satellites to the development of the JTRS terminals, said Bryan Scurry, director of operations at the Navy's program executive office for space systems, at the Milcom conference.

The Defense Department ordered that the MUOS satellite also connect to the global information grid so users can access the Pentagon's proprietary networks such as SIPRNET and NIPRNET. The capability has been built into the satellites, but the Defense Information Systems Agency has yet to come up with a connection into ground-based teleports to support that capability.

Scurry said network connectivity was a "requirement without funding." DISA has no financial authority over the services, and no money of its own so far to solve the teleport problem.

The narrowband system will not be a white elephant for the foreseeable future because of the failing health of the ultra-high frequency follow-on communications (UFO) satellites that they are designed to replace, he said.

MOUS will have legacy payloads that will duplicate the UFOs' capability. UHF is the only radio frequency that can penetrate clouds, foliage and urban structures.

The four planned MUOS satellites are due to begin launching at a rate of one per year starting in 2010, he said. That leaves a 15month gap between the projected failure of the next UFO satellite and the first launch.

The newly opened Operationally Responsive Space Office under U.S. Strategic Command has been asked to provide solutions to the close this capability gap.

Scurry said if one more UFO satellite fails prematurely, there will be a loss of capability for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan.

About 85 percent of MUOS capability is intended for the Army and the Marine Corps.

The Navy is starting to "turn the tide" to push the Army to issue requirements to develop terminals and radios to support MUOS capability, Scurry said.

"The requirement wasn't there, the funding wasn't there ... so we're still at a roadblock as far as pursuing that terminal," Scurry said.

"Once that capability gets field ed, then that capacity goes through the roof," Scurry said. One MUOS will equal 10 UFO satellites, he said.

"We need to get those terminals moving faster and fielded much quicker than we are currently projected."

Sorenson said, "We're still working, trying to figure out what is that interface is going to be. What is that soldier going to walk around with to basically take advantage of that capability?"

"We still have some work to do," he said without providing any timelines.

Transformational-Satellite (T-Sat). Scheduled to have its first launch as early as 2016, T-Sat is designed to dramatically boost the bandwidth that can be pushed to the lowest echelons by employing powerful Ku-band transponders and laser-based communications that are nearly impossible to jam.

The five-satellite constellation will support the Marine Corps and Army's vision of space-based on the-move communications, which entails sending and transmitting live streaming video to and from a humvee, Stryker or other vehicles as they speed down roads.

Johansen of Boeing Co., who is vying for the contract along with Lockheed Martin, said T-Sat could "revolutionize" satellite communications.

The decision on which of the satellite builders wins the contract may come as early December.

Meanwhile, Congress continues to question whether the Air Force should take money out of the T-Sat account and buy additional WGS or advanced EHF satellites.

T-Sat is a test of the "block approach" to developing satellites. The program calls for the services that will use the system to produce clear requirements, then for the builders to achieve technical milestones in increments before they proceed to the next block. Under this strategy, the first T-Sats to reach orbit will not have all the capabilities envisioned. Once the first blocks prove themselves in space, the second generation will become fully capable. This measured approach is designed to reduce risk and maintain a predictable schedule.

So far for T-Sat, the approach seems to be working, GAO found. Six of the seven critical technologies have been tested in relevant environment, it noted.

GAO warned that T-Sat will be one of the most costly and technically complex military systems ever attempted. It has a $14 billion to $16 billion price tag.

--STEW MAGNUSON WITH ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY SANDRA I. ERWIN

EMAIL COMMENTS TO SMAGNUSON@NDIA.ORG