The United States anticipates that its international Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite constellation partners–Canada, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom–will join it in performing terminal development testing in the next several months, according to a key Air Force official.
Air Force Chief of Protected Satellite Communications (SATCOM) Division and AEHF Program Manager Col. Rod Miller told reporters yesterday during a conference call all three nations have their own terminal development programs and have been deploying their capabilities. The Defense Department’s terminal development program is known as Family of Advanced Beyond Line-of-Sight Terminals (FAB-T), currently a competition between Raytheon [RTN] and Boeing [BA] that is winding down. FAB-T is exclusive to the United States.
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| Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite. Photo: Lockheed Martin. |
The United States and its international AEHF partners will use a variety of different terminals to communicate with AEHF satellites. Canada will use the U.S. Navy Multi-Band Terminal (NMT) and the U.S. Army’s Secure Mobile Anti-Jam Reliable Tactical-Terminal (SMART-T), both developed by Raytheon. SMART-T, which has U.S. and international variants, is also used by the Netherlands. There was no terminal developed exclusively for international partners.
Canada in early May became the first partner nation to communicate using AEHF using the “International Partner Variant SMART-T” (Defense Daily, June 18). An industry source told Defense Daily yesterday the Netherlands also connected to AEHF in June, leaving the United Kingdom as the last remaining international partner. The United Kingdom is scheduled to connect in the next several months, the source said.
FAB-T is to provide nuclear-survivable terminals capable of using multiple waveforms and communicating with both legacy Milstar and next-generation AEHF satellites. FAB-T development terminals will operate in fixed and transportable ground installations and aboard B-2 and B-52 bombers, RC-135 reconnaissance aircraft and the E-4B National Airborne Command Post and E-6B “Take Charge and Move Out” aircraft fleets (Defense Daily, Aug. 23).
Miller spoke with reporters in a preview of the Sept. 18 launch of AEHF-3, which is scheduled to take place between 3:00 and 5:00 a.m. EST from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla. The launch of AEHF-3 will take place on one of United Launch Alliance’s (ULA) Atlas V rockets. Miller said all pre-launch activities have completed successfully with no issues and that spacecraft fueling, spacecraft encapsulation and mating were completed on schedule. ULA is a joint venture between Boeing and Lockheed Martin [LMT].
Lockheed Martin is under contract to deliver six AEHF satellites and the Mission Control Segment. Both AEHF-1 and AEHF-2 are on orbit, AEHF-3 is scheduled for launch next week while AEHF-4 is scheduled to launch in third quarter 2016 (Defense Daily, June 21). The Air Force in December awarded Lockheed Martin a $1.9 billion contract to build AEHF-5 and AEHF-6 (Defense Daily, Jan. 3).