The head of the Air Force’s space efforts said the service is going to need clarification of September guidance discussing obtaining military satellite communications (MILSATCOM) services from commercial providers via hosted payloads using military spectrum.
“I think we’re going to need clarification of that policy,” Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) chief Gen. William Shelton told reporters Nov. 7 at an Air Force Association breakfast in Arlington, Va. “The policy was intended to speak only to spectrum and it ended up speaking much more broadly and I don’t think that was the intent at all. So look for clarification from the CIO.”
The Defense Department Chief Information Officer is Teri Takai. Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Damien Pickart said he wouldn’t be able to comment by press time.
The Sept. 26 policy, signed by Deputy CIO for C4 and Information Infrastructure Capabilities Air Force Maj. Gen. Robert Wheeler, at first discusses spectrum issues like international registration of frequencies used by hosted payloads. But the meat of the guidance discusses technical limitations DoD sees in working with commercial satellite operators, detailing numerous restrictions if the Pentagon was to approach putting military satellite payloads on commercial satellites buses.
One is any relocation of the hosting satellite from the originally-contracted location shall be approved by DoD. Another is in the event of radio frequency interference (RFI), financial responsibility for mitigation and the loss of service would be with the commercial satellite operator. A third is DoD shall have the right to restrict movement of a hosting satellite (if its operator chooses to relocate it) until it can obtain “equivalent, usable” capability in the geographic area “critical to operations.”
DoD would also have the right to direct a commercial satellite to a government-approved buyer or the government itself if the commercial satellite operator was to enter bankruptcy, sell, go out of business or terminate the contract.
The guidance says specific frequencies under consideration are hosted payloads operating at Ultra High Frequency (UHF), X-band, Ka-band and Extremely High Frequency (EHF).