Congressional defense authorizers want insights from the Department of the Air Force on future hybrid satellite communications (SATCOM) terminals able to use commercial and military signals.
U.S. Space Force has referred to the 10 Boeing [BA] Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) satellites, the last of which launched on March 15, 2019, as the “backbone” of the U.S. military’s wideband satellite communications.
“The conferees are concerned that the funding for WGS-12, like its predecessor WGS-11, was not requested by the U.S. Space Force in its budget request and that the service, enabled by Congress, continues to rely on only purpose-built systems instead of working to bring more commercial capabilities into the satellite communications (SATCOM) architecture,” according to the fiscal 2024 defense authorization conference report. “The conferees believe that going forward the U.S. Space Force should work with other service components to develop hybrid terminals that will enable the use of a resilient-by-design architecture that takes advantage of commercial broadband services while also allowing access to on-orbit WGS.”
The House Armed Services Committee (HASC), in Section 1605 of the HASC version of the fiscal 2024 defense authorization bill, had recommended barring the Air Force from awarding a WGS-12 contract until Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration Frank Calvelli certified that commercial providers could not meet SATCOM requirements, but the conferees dropped the HASC prohibition.
Space Force has been planning to launch WGS-11 next year (Defense Daily, Sept. 21, 2020). WGS-11 is to be able to shape its narrower beams against jamming threats and is to have twice the communications capacity of each of the current WGS satellites.
The fiscal 2024 defense authorization conference report directs Calvelli “in consultation with the Joint Staff to submit a report the congressional defense committees, not later than March 1, 2024, on how the
follow-on system for wideband communications will incorporate commercial SATCOM including budget profile and acquisition strategy.”
“The report should also address how the other services plan to upgrade terminals on their platforms,” the conferees said.