New Course for Navy SATCOM
NAVY SELECTS NEW COMMUNICATIONS TERMINALS AND
RETHINKS HOW IT USES SATELLITE BANDWIDTH.
Naval operations depend on strong and reliable satellite communications, delivered wherever ships at sea—or submarines beneath it—may be. To boost the availability of critical satellite signals to sea forces, the Navy has commissioned new hardware to combine the receipt of various signals into one console.
At the same time, the Navy is also looking at possibly changing the way it purchases satellite service. Through the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), which acquires satellite communications services for the military branches, the Navy may one day adopt a new approach to using satellite bandwidth. By making satellite signals more dynamic, Navy commands would not pay for unused service and could make better use of available satellite power.
But while the change in acquisition procedures remains a question mark, the new Navy satellite communications terminals are almost a done deal. The competition is mere months from wrapping up with the Navy’s award of a prime contract to one of two companies that have a great deal of experience helping the Navy out with satellite communications.
The two contractors competing to outfit the Navy with the Navy Multi-band Terminal (NMT) have entered a rigorous round of testing, to be completed by the end of March, which will determine if their terminals operate as shore, ship and submarine configurations under a range of circumstances. The Navy projects a contract award to either Harris or Raytheon in early summer for the program, which has an estimated value of $1.6 billion.
Both companies have been under contract to the Navy for more than three years to develop prototypes of the terminals. The service extended the original 30-month program several times to account for new emerging technologies, such as compliance with Software Communications Architecture (SCA), enabling the terminals to receive new waveforms as do software-defined radio systems in the Joint Tactical Radio System (JTRS) program.
The NMT terminals will serve two primary purposes: combining existing X-band and Q-band terminals into one console, and adding a Ka-band service through the Wideband Gapfiller Satellites (WGS) system. WGS boosts Navy throughput up to 30 megabits per second maximum instead of the 3 to 5 megabits that Navy satellite terminals usually achieve today, according to estimates.
The military X-band, known as Super High Frequency (SHF) communication, uses the Defense Satellite Communications System (DSCS). The X-band operates in the 7-8 gigahertz range. The Q-band, known as Extremely High Frequency (EHF) communication, is used for protected strategic communications. The Q band operates in the 44-gigahertz range, making it better suited for high bandwidth communications as well. The Ka-band frequency operates at 30 gigahertz.
The NMT program also makes use of the Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite system being established by the Department of Defense. The Navy anticipates that those satellites will launch before NMT terminals are ready, and so is eager to minimize any gap that may occur in the potential downtime between satellite launch and terminal production.
The program also incorporates addition of the Global Broadcast System (GBS) to the multi-band terminals. GBS, which operates over commercial direct broadcast satellite technology, will use frequencies compatible with WGS and EHF systems. In adding it to NMT terminals, the Navy can reduce the number of terminals required onboard ships and submarines while clearing out some of the antennae and electronics used to support GBS.
PROGRAMMING WAVEFORMS
Raytheon has announced that it was the first company to achieve SCA-compliance with its NMT prototype, thus proving that software-defined terminals could receive programmable waveforms. Furthermore, Raytheon reported last fall that its NMT system logged onto and communicated with DoD Milstar satellite communications systems using low data rate (LDR) and medium data rate (MDR) waveforms.
SCA compliance represented an impressive technical achievement, according to Glen Bassett, program manager for the Raytheon NMT program.
“The Software Communications Architecture is a method, a set of rules, you use to develop your software and your hardware to make software isolated from the hardware,” Bassett said. “Our system is required to be SCA-compliant. We have developed a reference architecture that is fully SCA-compliant, and we have now implemented it. It’s almost a million lines of software code, and it is in NMT.”
Raytheon is using the same architecture and software in its advanced communications systems for the Air Force and Army as well. The software-defined communications system operates independently of the hardware being used, and operators can reprogram terminals to run different waveforms relatively quickly.
In the case of NMT, the SCA-compliant system acquired a Milstar satellite and exchanged data for the LDR and MDR waveforms. To date, the system has simulated satellite communications for the AEHF waveform, since the satellite has yet to launch.
“The other services are having trouble getting their satellite systems to work, those that are being built by other suppliers,” Bassett declared. “But it can be done. It doesn’t take a 200 percent cost overrun or a four-year schedule slip to do it. We did it on time and on budget.”
The fly-off testing is designed to put the terminals through a large battery of tests, Bassett added. Those tests were expected to last about six weeks and run 16 hours a day. Terminals that pass the testing successfully would demonstrate that they have minimized risk, thus enabling the Navy to move to production quickly. Even after the contract award, more testing would follow for environmental qualifications and electromagnetic interference, Bassett predicted.
“The Raytheon approach here was to take the experience and expertise we have gained over the 25 years of doing this for the Navy, Army and the Air Force. We have spent 13,000 hours onboard ships in the last three and a half years, learning about how the Navy uses this,” Bassett said. “These were designers out there with the Navy, learning about how these systems need to be used and the ins and outs. That’s the kind of insight that has gone into the design of this system.”
NMT must prove extremely reliable because so many communications options are combined into its terminals, Bassett noted. The combination of technologies actually enhances the reliability of the new terminals, he said, since reducing heat and the number of parts boosts reliability overall.
“When you are combining all of those systems and services into one terminal, it is a great advantage because you are taking up less space and less power, and there’s less electromagnetic interference on the ship because all of those antennae are reduced and you don’t have as many interfering radiators on top of the ship,” he said, while adding that “it brings with it the problem that you have all of your eggs in one basket.”
BOOSTING RELIABILITY
Harris became the first company to achieve an NMT uplink to the Milstar 6 satellite, the company announced last fall. Shortly before, Harris had acquired and tracked LDR and MDR waveforms on the same satellite, said Michael O’Reilly, director of Harris Naval Communications Systems.
“Our terminals today are the most reliable MILSATCOM in the Navy fleet,” O’Reilly remarked. “We hope to extend that after the win on NMT to continue to provide the most reliable systems into the fleet.”
In the testing phase, referred to as PT1 testing, both Harris and Raytheon must demonstrate a level of functionality against a set of minimum requirements, O’Reilly explained, including demonstrations that the terminals work in shore, submarine and ship configurations, under different sets of circumstances and using LDR, MDR and extended data rate (XDR) waveforms. Harris has tested the XDR waveform intended for use with the AEHF satellite systems against a simulator.
O’Reilly added that Harris began the PT1 testing by completing a subset of the testing for the antenna system. The company reverse-engineered a number of legacy antennae left behind by earlier contractors.
“The system has to work with legacy, submarine and shore antennas. An incumbent built those in the past, but very little interface information was provided to the Navy and us,” O’Reilly elaborated. “So we have had to reverse-engineer those interfaces. We have done that successfully. We interface our equipment through the submarine and shore antennas and operate over the satellite with them.”
Harris has faced the challenges of dealing not just with legacy technology but also new technology. The concept of a multi-band terminal is one facet of the new technology with which Harris has a track record, O’Reilly indicated.
“It could be perceived that making a multi-band terminal is new technology. But we currently already provide a multi-band terminal to the Navy,” he said. “Our Whiskey Sixes [Harris AN/ WSC-6E(V)9 terminals] provide both C- and X-band capability today, and we are providing a Ka-ready version of those today to the DDGs. Those are tri-band capable. We are extending that technology into NMT as well, which has got the X and Ka band. So we are leveraging that.”
Harris also recently announced a 12-month contract with the Navy to provide a Harris AN/WSC-6E(V)9 Multi-band Shipboard Satellite Communications Terminal (MSSCT) for the Lockheed Martin Littoral Combat Ship.
In addition, Harris has created a programmable modem to download new waveforms into its NMT terminal. Such new waveforms would support evolution of the AEHF satellite communications but also Transformational Satellite (TSAT) capability as that becomes available in the future, O’Reilly said. O’Reilly pointed out that Harris also has a lot of experience in the radio frequency capabilities of these communications terminals, as well as in shipboard design.
“One of the key capabilities that we bring is the system engineering to pull it all together,” he said. “Communications is the focus of this company. We don’t build missiles; we don’t build launchers; we don’t build that stuff. All we do is communications, and we do it as well as anybody. We have a large number of systems engineering folks and design engineers who understand communications technology.”
COMMERCIAL CHANGES
In addition to installing new multi-band terminals, the Navy is working with DISA to consider the possibility of changes in how it acquires commercial satellite services.
In a request for information (RFI) this past fall, DISA stated that it was “seeking information that will help the agency refine its current approach to the planning, provisioning, acquiring, managing and operating commercial SATCOM services for Navy requirements.”
In so doing, DISA would potentially change the way the Navy buys C-band satellite coverage. To date, the Navy has solicited space segment capacity through a guaranteed number of links at specific data rates for each leased transponder. DISA noted that the Navy has acquired dependable and static connectivity through the use of such solicitations, but the service perhaps would benefit from connectivity that was not “static” in order to maximize the use of satellite resources by Navy ships in the most cost-effective manner.
“DISA and Navy are seeking information on the best method to maximize resources and minimize cost,” the RFI stated. “Navy believes there may be innovative solutions for maximizing space segment resources and minimizing costs and idle capacity. The Navy envisions an innovative concept similar to lease mobility.
“Under the lease mobility concept, the fleet user is not concerned with satellite, Land Earth Stations or terrestrial path as long as connectivity to the desired Navy point of presence is maintained,” the RFI continued. “Under the proposed operational simplicity, the vendor would minimize the need for frequent repointing of the shipboard antenna. Under this concept, the vendors— through creative service allocations—could redistribute available power or bandwidth on multiple satellites rather than reserving full transponders that may at times sit idle.”
DISA officials held an industry day in November to collect feedback on the idea. They also responded to some questions via e-mail concerning their motivation behind the RFI.
“DISA and the Navy are seeking ideas from industry on how to buy more cost-efficient space segment resources by minimizing idle capacity,” DISA officials wrote. “As DISA understands it, the Navy currently leases fixed satellite space segment and pays for it whether the fleet is at sea using the bandwidth or not in order to assure itself of surge capacity.”
DISA stressed that the RFI would not necessarily lead to any solicitations of any kind. The agency also reported that it was in the process of examining information provided by industry to determine the feasibility of the very concept.
“The purpose of the request for information is to explore with industry if there are fixed satellite service business models that DoD might consider,” DISA officials explained. “It cannot be determined if the Navy could save money or by what amount as responses from industry have not been fully analyzed.”
The agency also noted that DoD policy requires all users of fixed and mobile satellite services to purchase their satellite bandwidth through DISA, hence the manner of the inquiry. DISA currently utilizes the Defense Information System Network (DISN) Satellite Transmission Services–Global (DSTS-G) contract vehicle for fixed satellite service, but allows users to go off the DSTS-G contract if a military requirement falls outside its competitive scope. ♦
