Sponsored By Viasat
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08 Oct 21. ViaLite Supports Raytheon with Mission Critical, Extended Length GPS over Fiber. A new project sees ViaLite supplying Raytheon Technologies, the world leading mil-aero corporation, with its cutting edge ‘GPS over Fiber Extension Kit’ for Microsemi GPS servers. The Kit provides mission critical GPS timing and synchronization for systems requiring extremely accurate clock signals. Standard transmission distances for the extension kit can be up to 10 km, while solutions are available for distances as long as 50 km.
“The ViaLite kit was chosen for its unique performance with Microsemi’s S650 timing server, along with our best in class quality, reliability and support,” said Craig Somach, ViaLite Director of Sales North America.
The ViaLite GPS link is ideal for providing a remote GPS/GNSS signal or derived timing reference to equipment located where no signal is available, such as inside buildings or tunnels. By using optical fiber instead of traditional coax, extreme distances are possible with no RF loss and zero introduction of noise.
04 Oct 21. Launch Agreement Signed By EnduroSat With Exolaunch For 2022 Mission Via SpaceX. EnduroSat and Exolaunch have signed a launch agreements for sending two EnduroSat smallsats into orbit aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch vehicle. The 6U XL SharedSat smallsats, built by EnduroSat for customers, will be launched via Exolaunch in H1 2022 as part of SpaceX’s SmallSat Rideshare Program. The SharedSats are 6U XL smallsats with several multi-purpose payloads on a single bus. By simplifying access to space services through shared missions for a range of commercial, exploration and science customers, EnduroSat aims to significantly lower the entry barrier of operations in orbit.= The two SharedSats are part of the commercial EnduroSat’s Missions. They foresee integration, validation, and testing, launch and operations of the satellite and hosted payloads. Direct access to the payload data will be made available in the cloud through EnduroSat’s Digital Mission Control. The software-centric smallsat architecture allows for multiple payloads to operate together reliably on a single platform with access to on-demand processing, power and pointing capability. Exolaunch will ensure comprehensive rideshare mission management, satellite integration and deployment services for both EnduroSat missions. The launches are arranged by Exolaunch under its Multi-Launch Agreement with SpaceX. The new launch agreements mark the expansion of EnduroSat’s Shared Satellite Service and pave the way to the continued cooperation between the companies on future launches. For both missions, Exolaunch will use their proprietary deployment technologies — the EXOpod, a next-gen cubesat deployer with half a decade and 100+ of released satellites flight heritage, to deploy the EnduroSat’s satellites into their target SSO above 500 km, and the EXOport, a flexible, multi-satellite adapter designed to optimally accommodate several satellites on a single Falcon 9 port. Exolaunch’s EXOpod (l) and EXOport (r). Photos are courtesy of the company.
“We’re really pleased to have signed a launch agreement with Exolaunch, as it is another step in our mission to provide easy access to space. The Shared Satellite Service goal is to help drive innovation at the final frontier for visionary entrepreneurs, scientists, and technologists. At EnduroSat, we are eager to see the innovations that our customers will accomplish in space and are happy to support them every step of the way,” said EnduroSat’s Founder and CEO, Raycho Raychev.
“We’re proud to support EnduroSat with a variety of launch options and flexible mission management to address all their ongoing launch needs for the Shared Satellite Service program. Exolaunch has acquired outstanding flight heritage with Falcon 9 after signing a multi-launch agreement with SpaceX and is pleased to become a trusted launch partner for EnduroSat,” said Jeanne Medvedeva, VP of Launch Services at Exolaunch. “It’s our common vision to make space accessible for everyone and we are honored to contribute to EnduroSat’s mission.” (Source: Satnews)
07 Oct 21. National Reconnaissance Office opens door for more commercial services. The agency in charge of developing and launching America’s spy satellites is turning to industry for new capabilities. National Reconnaissance Office Director Christopher Scolese announced at the 2021 GEOINT conference in St. Louis Oct. 7 that the agency plans to release a new Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) Framework for Strategic Commercial Enhancements in the coming weeks, which will allow it to incorporate new commercial services faster than ever before.
“The BAA is a flexible approach to an acquisition process that will allow us to evaluate, leverage and even integrate new and emerging technologies and phenomenology like radar, hyperspectral and [radio frequency] sensing as they become available,” Scolese said. “We’re going to need all of those capabilities based on our plans for the future.”
In recent years, the NRO has been aggressive in analyzing commercial satellite capabilities, starting with the establishment of the Commercial Systems Program Office three years ago. In 2019, the agency issued several study contracts to assess the commercial services offered by various satellite companies, and Scolese noted the agency has awarded contracts worth hundreds of ms of dollars to commercial providers.
“Those contracts are providing about a hundred m square kilometers of commercial imagery every single week,” said Scolese.
The agency is also working on two contracts for commercial radar and RF sensing capabilities, said the director. In June, NRO issued a draft request for proposals for its next generation of electro-optical imagery contracts, and awards are expected early next year.
But Scolese pointed to the BAA as a way for the agency to move even more quickly in evaluating and acquiring new commercial services.
“We know we can go a lot faster than the traditional methods and still meet all the requirements. Now we want to go faster still,” said Scolese.
The first BAA focus area will be commercial radar.(Source: Defense News)
05 Oct 21. Space Force Eyes Commercial P-LEO SATCOM.
“If the Space Systems Command is going to acquire other commercial services in the same fashion that CSCO has been acquiring commercial SATCOM, then that will not serve the warfighter well,” said Rebecca Cowen-Hirsch, senior vice president for government strategy and policy at Inmarsat.
Operators of commercial broadband mega-constellations in Low Earth Orbit, known as p-LEO providers, have until Thursday to respond to Space Force’s draft request for proposals (RFP) on how it might acquire their services. Space Force’s goal is to expand the options for military users in the field to connect to the internet, and share data including video.
“This approach would pave the way for LEO constellations like OneWeb’s network both to support coordinated control of the battlespace and to supply hosted solutions to the armed forces. … We are excited to see this draft lead to a final RFP,” said Dylan Browne, head of government business at OneWeb, one of the firms with eyes on a potential contract.
Brown added that OneWeb’s satellites are “well positioned” to meet Space Force’s needs, “given our planned network’s inherent resilience, its interoperability with GEO Ku-band networks, and its scalability, which makes it able to handle simultaneous usage surges in places around the world.”
OneWeb on Sept. 15 successfully added 34 satellites to its constellation, bringing the total number in orbit to 322 satellites — almost half the planned 648 birds planned. According to the company, it remains on track to start actual broadband services this year, and achieve global service coverage in 2022.
Similarly, SpaceX is populating LEO with its Starlink constellation, which ultimately is planned to comprise some 100,000 satellites. As of its last launch on Sept. 14, the company has orbited 1,791 Starlinks and has approval in 14 countries to operate. Like OneWeb, SpaceX is not yet actually offering commercial services.
However, it has been participating in a number of DoD experiments and prototypes, including the Space Development Agency’s effort to build new missile tracking satellites in lower orbits than the current Space Based Infrared System (SBIRS) birds.
The p-LEO draft proposal is not public but only only available to industry upon contacting Space Systems Command (SSC) — the new Space Force command for acquisition, replacing Space and Missile Systems Center, at Los Angeles AFB. The SSC request for information (RFI) says that Space Force intends to grant indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (ID/IQ) contracts to a number of p-LEO providers.
Commercial Space Acquisition
DoD for many years has had, in one form or another, a program to tap into commercial satellite communications (SATCOM). Currently, use of commercial bandwidth is managed by SSC’s Commercial Satellite Communications Office (CSCO), headed by Clare Grason — an office that Space Force is looking to expand to handle acquisition of other types of commercial space capabilities, such as remote sensing.
CSCO serves as a middleman between commercial satellite operators and then matches the needs of various operational commands and other DoD customers to a provider — helping manage the contracting process. However, CSCO doesn’t have a budget or program of record for buying bandwidth access; rather funds are found in the Overseas Contingency Operations fund when a need for a surge in connectivity is required by operators.
Chief of Space Operations Gen. Jay Raymond, in his February 2020 Enterprise SATCOM Vision document, laid out a farther reaching aspiration.
That document calls for Space Force to build and manage a seamless network of military and commercial comsats in all orbits, accessible to troops, vehicles, ships and aircraft via ground terminals and mobile receivers that would automatically “hop” from one satellite network to another. It includes looking at new acquisition approaches, and Space Force has been experimenting with using contracting authorities like Section 804 and Other Transaction Authority (OTA).
Whither ‘Satellite As A Service’?
But traditional commercial SATCOM providers — whose satellites are based in higher Geosynchronous Orbits (GEO, some 36,000 kilometers in altitude) or Medium Earth Orbit (MEO, between GEO and the edge of LEO at some 2,000 kilometers) — continue to be disappointed with the lack of progress toward that goal.
Major industry players, including Viasat; Hughes; Intelsat; Inmarsat; SES and Eutelsat, have been arguing the Pentagon would save money, and speed capabilities, by buying satcom “managed services” — like an average mobile phone or cable TV/Internet plan — instead of leasing commercial bandwidth in fits and starts for short periods of time.
“If the Space Systems Command is going to acquire other commercial services in the same fashion that CSCO has been acquiring commercial SATCOM, then that will not serve the warfighter well. As you know, we have been advocating for many, many years now that commercial SATCOM be acquired more strategically, and not on an ad hoc, case-by-case, reactionary basis,” said Rebecca Cowen-Hirsch, senior vice president for government strategy and policy at Inmarsat, in an interview. “If today’s method is going to apply to other broadband commercial services, then that is a recipe that is not going to bake well.”
“We’ve been talking about it for as long as I’ve been involved with satellites in the last 12 years,” Rick Lober, vice president of Hughes’s Defense & Intelligence Systems Division, told Breaking Defense. “We need to see this stuff move more towards programs of record, and not, you know, BAAs, OTAs, studies, prototyping, and that seems to have been been slow.”
Congress, too, has been trying to push the Department of the Air Force, which oversees Space Force and the Air Force, and DoD writ large to reform how it buys commercial bandwidth. Lawmakers have been consistently adding money to launch a program of record to buy SATCOM as a service for a number of years.
“There’s a trail that goes back to 2014,” Hirsch noted. “And it is a bipartisan issue.”
Space Force asked for $23.8m in its fiscal 2022 budget request, but that was for integration of commercial SATCOM into its portfolio of options for bandwidth — not for actually buying data and/or services from companies.
“And that’s an M as a million, so it’s a very infinitesimally small number in the big scheme of things,” Cowen-Hirsch said. She noted, with some obvious frustration, that commercial SATCOM providers keep waiting to see actual movement rather than “just acquiring additional consultants to do studies.” (Source: glstrade.com/Breaking Defense.com)
06 Oct 21. National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency boss reveals data strategy. The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency has a new strategy for tackling the torrent of data pouring into the organization from all over the world, and it relies on automation, artificial intelligence and improving access to information.
NGA is the U.S. intelligence community’s go-to agency for processing and analyzing satellite imagery. It transforms sensor data collected by the National Reconnaissance Office, among other government and military entities, into usable intelligence products.
But the environment is quickly changing. Simply put, the agency faces an unprecedented amount of data from new satellite sources.
Dozens of commercial providers have created entire constellations of sensors that can feed data to the government, while within the Defense Department, organizations are developing or discussing entirely new constellations of imagery satellites to fulfill the needs of joint war fighters.
“The growth in GEOINT data from government and commercial sources here and around the world is staggering. This exponential growth in data leads us to one of our biggest challenges: managing all of the data,” Vice Adm. David Sharp, director of NGA, said Wednesday at the 2021 GEOINT Symposium in St. Louis, Missouri.
To that end, NGA has released a new data strategy to guide its efforts to develop the technologies and methods needed to effectively process the never-ending stream of information, and deliver useful intelligence to the intel community, the military and policymakers.
“Its goal is to make data easily accessible, improve its reusability and improve cross-domain efficiencies. We have to treat data as a strategic asset. Everyone needs to recognize that it’s a major component of enabling our mission,” Sharp said. “So our objective is to create, manage and securely share trusted data with the speed, accuracy and precision that our customers’ missions demand.”
Sharp outlined the four major focus areas guiding its data investments:
- “First, we have to have data that can be intuitively discovered, easily accessed and responsibly shared with those who need it.”
- “Second, we have to improve data assets so that they can be easily reused for both anticipated and unanticipated purposes.”
- “Third, our customers and workforce have to be able to efficiently find data across different security domains.”
- “And lastly, we need artificial intelligence and machine learning to enhance our production capacity.”
The director emphasized that AI and machine learning is a huge focus for the agency right now. As NGA officials previously noted, the amount of data fed to the agency today is simply too massive for human analysts to process alone. To fulfill its mission, the agency needs to automate much of the analysts’ jobs with machine learning so humans can focus on the more difficult problems.
Part of the strategy is driven by the needs of the Defense Department as it develops Joint All-Domain Command and Control, a war-fighting concept that seeks to connect every sensor to any shooter, using AI to deliver targeting and response recommendations to troops in seconds. It’s a process that has cut down the time from sensing a threat to firing on it from 20 minutes to just 20 seconds in demonstrations.
Key to those efforts are AI programs like the Army’s Prometheus, which can automatically detect threats from satellite imagery, and FIRESTORM, which takes those threats and instantly provides response recommendations to commanders.
“The services and joint war fighters are already experimenting with automated decision support in support of future joint war-fighting concepts. The war fighters are challenging us to get machines to understand where that data needs to go, how fast it needs to go, what format it needs to be in, and driving it across the infrastructure like a smart content delivery network. That’s where we need to go,” Sharp said. (Source: C4ISR & Networks)
05 Oct 21. A Collective Defense Community For Space Initiated By IronNet. IronNet, Inc. (NYSE: IRNT) (“IronNet”) continues to scale their presence in the space industry by welcoming customers X-energy and Satelles to the Collective Defense Community for Space, which shares real-time, automated, attack intelligence among community members for increased visibility and faster response to cyberattacks.
Established to protect companies driving the space development industry, IronNet’s Collective Defense Community for Space also includes Axiom Space and Intuitive Machines, as well as strategic partner Jacobs.
The next wave of space is being driven by the private sector with developments ranging from human travel to and from Mars, extended habitation on the moon and the development of LEO communication networks. X-energy, a nuclear reactor and fuel design engineering company, is pioneering faster rocket propulsion and developing a moon-based power supply for next-generation space exploration and prolonged habitation on moonbases.
Satelles, a LEO satellite-based positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) company is innovating communication technology by providing customers around the globe with highly secure and precise timing and location information.
Fueled by heavy investment in R&D, ground-breaking intellectual property, and a commitment to protecting human resources, the space development industry is increasingly prioritizing its cybersecurity investments, as evidenced by the sector’s flagship companies coming together to secure advanced space development efforts with IronNet.
IronNet’s Collective Defense Community for Space now includes companies representing key facets of the space program continuum — from satellites and communication services, to advancements in rocket engines, to lunar exploration, and habitation. Intuitive Machines, for instance, is targeting to be the first lander at the lunar south pole in 2022, and space infrastructure-as-a-service provider Axiom Space is building the commercial successor to the International Space Station, Axiom Station. Designed to complement global positioning system (GPS) and other global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), Satelles’ satellite time and location (STL) service provides uniquely powerful, extremely secure signals that are particularly important for critical infrastructure, including telecommunications networks, financial exchanges, electrical grids, and other sectors that depend on precise timing or location information.
IronNet’s Collective Defense Community for Space applies AI-based network detection and response, along with an embedded expert system that rates and prioritizes alerts and integrated hunt services to detect new and unidentified cyberattack behaviors. Community members can share attack intelligence anonymously and in real time for collaboration within a secure environment. Together, these capabilities give organizations enhanced visibility into the entire attack landscape and support often under-resourced security teams with actionable information and contextual insight from IronNet’s team of experienced hunters, who have defended some of the most critical commercial and national-level networks against sophisticated nation-state threats.
Communities can comprise organizations in a state, country, supply chain, or, as in the case of the space development initiative, a customized grouping across a specific industry sector. IronNet supports the leaders who are accelerating cybersecurity as an integral aspect of pioneering the commercial space and critical infrastructure sectors. Bringing IronNet’s expertise and [differentiated] technology to this innovative industry is intended to allow X-energy’s and Satelles’ R&D and technological advancements to continue securely.
X-energy CEO Clay Sell said, “Given that we are developing unique ways to accelerate space travel to Mars and empower a moon-based power supply that supports extended and sustainable human habitation, protecting our intellectual property is absolutely critical. We joined IronNet’s Collective Defense Community for Space to gain a dynamic, real-time view into the cyber threat landscape across the industry in order to combat the growing cyber threat.”
Michael O’Connor, CEO of Satelles, said, “Our goal of providing highly secure timing and positioning information is supported by IronNet’s complementary mission to secure enterprise networks through their NDR and Collective Defense capabilities. This layered security approach helps Satelles ensure that we can conduct our operations with the highest levels of cybersecurity possible.”
IronNet Co-CEO Bill Welch said, “IronNet is transforming cybersecurity by ensuring that no one company has to defend alone against an attack on a sector at large. We are deeply committed to securing the space development industry, which is on track to become an integral driver of economic, technological, and scientific progress and prosperity. We welcome X-energy and Satelles into the Collective Defense Community for Space.”
Founded in 2014 by Gen. (Ret.) Keith Alexander, IronNet, Inc. (NYSE: IRNT) is a global cybersecurity leader that is transforming how organizations secure their networks by delivering the first-ever Collective Defense platform operating at scale. Employing a number of former NSA cybersecurity operators with offensive and defensive cyber experience, IronNet integrates deep tradecraft knowledge into its industry-leading products to solve the most challenging cyber problems facing the world today. (Source: Satnews)
03 Oct 21. OQ Technology + GovSat Collaborating On IoT Solutions For Defence + Government. OQ Technology and GovSat have signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) to collaborate on developing and testing satellite-based IoT (Internet of things) and machine-to-machine (M2M) products aimed at defence and government sectors. By combining OQ Technology’s 5G products and services with GovSat’s end-to-end SATCOM solutions, already supporting customers such as NATO, the UK’s Ministry of Defence (MOD) and the Belgium Navy, the companies aim to offer highly scalable applications for air, land and maritime missions across the world. Customers of these future applications will benefit from access to real-time 5G IoT coverage, dedicated geostationary (GEO) capabilities, specialized frequencies and licenses, and a wider footprint of multiple beams.
Under the agreement, OQ Technology will provide user terminals, satellite hub equipment and remote management capabilities. The company will also re-design its satellite IoT user terminal to fit the GovSat frequency band, and this will also upgrade the antenna of the user terminal. In return, GovSat will give OQ Technology access to its satellite capacity, operate the satellite hub infrastructure and provide uplink services.
GovSat’s coverage is critical for government customers and NATO operations with a reach that spreads Europe, the Middle East, Africa and South West Asia, with maritime coverage for the Atlantic, Baltic, Mediterranean and Indian Oceans. Their high-powered, fully-steerable spot beams in X- and Mil Ka-Band, plus a global X-Band beam, in addition to a secure service hub, assure secure operations and resilient SATCOM capabilities.
Since its successful demonstration of the technology in 2019, OQ Technology has been working on its patent pending technology to provide global 5G IoT coverage, initially using an LEO smallsat constellation. Following the launch of its Tiger-2 satellite onboard the SpaceX Transporter-2 mission in July, the company is now offering commercial 5G IoT services for a variety of IoT applications for environmental monitoring and agriculture, logistics, maritime, smart metering, mining and oil & gas.
Omar Qaise, founder and CEO of OQ Technology said, “To successfully provide 5G IoT and machine communication to critical SATCOM applications in the defence and the government sector, it became evident that we had to partner with a specialized GEO operator. GovSat, due to its application know-how and experience of delivering secure, non-preemptible, reliable and accessible satellite communication services, is the perfect partner to achieve this.” (Source: Satnews)
04 Oct 21. Redesigned Joint Staff Badge Reflects Addition of Newest Military Service. The Joint Chiefs of Staff have, figuratively, unsheathed a new sword on the Joint Staff’s seal: the Space Force.
The seal has been revised to include the Space Force.
“The revising of the Joint Staff seal, now including the United States Space Force, demonstrates our commitment to the future and ensuring that we have capabilities in all domains necessary to defend our country – land, air, sea and space,” said Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
The change is the first in the “JCS identification badge” since it was established in 1963. “Prior to that, members of the Joint Staff wore the DOD identification badge – the one members of that staff still wear,” said David B. Crist, the JCS historian.
After the chief of Space Operations was made a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in February 2020, one of Crist’s historians was looking at the JCS badge. “Chris Holmes was the first to look at the badge and realize there are four swords on it to represent the military services,” Crist said. “So, to be consistent, if you have an additional military service, there ought to be another sword for the badge.”
Crist and crew researched to ensure the four swords on the badge represented the services. They did. The members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff unanimously voted to change the badge to reflect the addition of the Space Force.
The Joint Staff reached out to the Department of the Army’s Institute of Heraldry, which is based at Fort Belvoir, Virginia. The institute provides heraldic support not only to the military, but to all federal agencies that request it and designed the original badge. “Charles Mungo, the institute’s director, said he was wondering when he would hear from us,” Crist said. “He told me he was waiting for somebody to say the badge has to change because there’s additional service.”
The institute presented three designs to the Joint Chiefs. Milley wrote to Mungo saying the chiefs had chosen the option that added a slightly elevated sword in the center of the old design to reflect force projection into space.
The change is subtle. The badge has the same oval laurel wreath representing achievement, courage and victory; it also has the same red, white and blue shield of the United States. The difference is there are now five, unsheathed swords representing the armed might of the Army, Marine Corps, Navy, Air Force and Space Force.
The old badge is grandfathered for three years, Crist said. The newly designed badge will be issued to new members of the staff. He noted that the new badge is already available for sale. (Source: US DoD)
04 Oct 21. Enhanced SBIRS GEO-6 Missile Warning Satellite Ready Early for 2022 Launch. The U.S. Space Force’s latest missile warning satellite is ready for launch, after finishing production nearly a month ahead of schedule.
Lockheed Martin’s sixth Space Based Infrared System Geosynchronous Earth Orbit (SBIRS GEO-6) missile warning satellite is now in storage awaiting its expected launch in 2022. SBIRS GEO-6 is the second military space satellite built on Lockheed Martin’s modernized LM2100 Combat Bus™ — an enhanced space vehicle that provides even greater resiliency and cyber-hardening against growing threats, as well as improved spacecraft power, propulsion and electronics.
On Sept. 2, 2021, the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command determined that the SBIRS GEO-6 was complete. The satellite went into storage nearly a month ahead of its Sept. 30 Acquisition Program Baseline (APB) requirement date.
Once launched, SBIRS GEO-6 will join the Space Force’s constellation of missile warning satellites, equipped with powerful scanning and staring infrared surveillance sensors that protect our nation 24-7. These sensors collect data that allow the U.S. military to detect missile launches, support ballistic missile defense, expand technical intelligence gathering and bolster situational awareness on the battlefield.
New Bus Design Means Greater Resiliency and Enhanced Capabilities
Like its immediate predecessor, SBIRS GEO-5, which launched on May 18, 2021, SBIRS GEO-6 is built on a modernized space vehicle design. The enhanced LM2100 Combat Bus provides:
- Greater resiliency and cyber-hardening
- Enhanced spacecraft power, propulsion and electronics
- Common components and procedures to streamline manufacturing
- Flexible design that reduces the cost to incorporate future, modernized sensor suites
The SBIRS GEO-5 space vehicle continues to prove itself. In June 2021, SBIRS GEO-5 turned on its powerful sensors for the first time during space vehicle checkout and transmitted its first images back to Earth in a milestone known as “First Light.”
“Furthermore, the performance of SBIRS GEO-5’s LM2100 Combat Bus has exceeded expectations throughout the on orbit test campaign since its launch,” said Tom McCormick, Lockheed Martin’s vice president for Overhead Persistent Infrared Systems.
Upgrade Provides Flexibility for Evolving Threats and Mission Needs
SBIRS GEO-6 and GEO-5 were originally slated to be clones of previous SBIRS satellites produced by Lockheed Martin. Then in 2015, the U.S. Air Force agreed to rebaseline the contract for the two satellites and upgrade both–at no additional cost–to the LM 2100 Combat Bus, taking advantage of a Lockheed Martin internally funded, multiyear modernization initiative.
“We are proud to deliver additional overhead persistent infrared capabilities critical to our Nation’s defense with SBIRS GEO-5 and GEO-6. The LM2100 Combat Bus continues to be an effective platform to help meet the Chief of Space Operations’ vision for streamlined space acquisitions,” said Col. Matt Spencer, Senior Materiel Leader for Space Systems Command’s GEO/Polar Division.
“The LM2100 is a game changer for military satellite design providing satellite production efficiency, enhanced resiliency options and so much more flexibility for additional payloads and sensors,” said McCormick. “From the LM2100, we’ve really been able to enhance resiliency developing a ‘Combat Bus’ and a bridge to achieving the resilient missile warning required for the Space Force’s Next-Gen OPIR Block 0 System.”
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At Viasat, we’re driven to connect every warfighter, platform, and node on the battlefield. As a global communications company, we power ms of fast, resilient connections for military forces around the world – connections that have the capacity to revolutionize the mission – in the air, on the ground, and at sea. Our customers depend on us for connectivity that brings greater operational capabilities, whether we’re securing the U.S. Government’s networks, delivering satellite and wireless communications to the remote edges of the battlefield, or providing senior leaders with the ability to perform mission-critical communications while in flight. We’re a team of fearless innovators, driven to redefine what’s possible. And we’re not done – we’re just beginning.
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