A Demand for Sytemwide Improvements
The Air Force is upgrading its Command and Control System-Consolidated (CCS-C) program, which is responsible for providing military satellite communications tracking, telemetry and command capability. Contractor Integral Systems Inc. (ISI) of Lanham, Md., is phasing out obsolete components of the system.
A second block of the system may also be in the works at Air Force Space Command, revealed Larry Lind, ISI CCS-C program manager. The second block, which may require a new round of competition, is expected to bring even more capability to CCS-C, which has reduced USAF costs for sustainment of its satellite systems by more than 75 percent since it was implemented in 2003.
“Overall, it supports the MILSATCOM mission through satellite ground system simulation, ground system resource management, telemetry command processing, orbit and altitude data processing, mission planning and scheduling, and system training and analysis,” Lind told MSMF.
CCS-C makes maximum use of commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) products and ensures redundancy of critical functions. The centerpiece of CCS-C is ISI’s Epoch product suite, which offers telemetry and command server applications. The Epoch v4 client provides functionality for Microsoft Windows users, who can drag and drop information, and access historical data, while plotting in real time.
Commercial and government operators use Epoch to control single satellites or fleets of them as well as ground system equipment. Of course, Epoch offers automation of standard functions, requiring only an allocation of minimal staff for support. ISI has 130 people assigned to supporting CCS-C, freeing the Air Force to assign airmen to other mission-critical jobs.
ISI customers can pair the Epoch client with an Epoch telemetry and command server, which is a COTS solution for data processing, distribution and command formatting. The client directs the server to manage satellites or constellations of satellites. It is compatible with most of the commercial satellite designs from the past 17 years right out of the box.
“It’s simple to operate. On the commercial side, Epoch is involved in a large percentage of the satellites we control. It offers the ability to bring on new satellite families very quickly and easily,” Lind commented.
The Air Force’s prior system, known simply as CCS, required a mainframe and intensive manual tasking from operators.
“The main thing it does is that it reduces manpower operationally,” Lind elaborated. “There is a lot more automation involved in the CCS-C program than with the old program. So Air Force Space Command and the satellite operation centers were able to reduce their manpower because CCS-C brings a lot of automation to the table.”
Every maneuver in the past required a paper pass order even for routine state of health operations. Those now have become task automated operations, where commands are sent in sequence via the CCS-C system instead of individually sent in manually. As a result, CCS-C has drastically reduced the number of errors input into the system. Many of the commands in the sequence are programmed in advance, providing opportunities to review and correct them.
The CCS-C system handles tasks such as state of health and “delta V” maneuvers, Lind explained. It processes any sort of daily regular activity that occurs with the satellites under its control while monitoring the satellite’s position in space. The main goal of the system is to ensure the satellite is available for warfighters on demand, at all times, Lind added.
“Overall, it’s been a very successful program,” he said. “We have shown that through automation we can reduce the manpower and allow us to keep the programs on budget and on time. It’s a success story for the Air Force from a Space and Missile Center perspective.”
UNMANNED AERIAL SYSTEMS
Of course, warfighters want satellites to be healthy and available so that they can provide communications bandwidth. Providing bandwidth becomes a tricky proposition when satellites are broadcasting to highly mobile transponders in unmanned aerial systems (UASs). As allied military forces rely more and more on UASs to provide reconnaissance and to fulfill other missions, they will need more and more bandwidth.
And that’s exactly what Intelsat General Corp. of Bethesda, Md., is preparing for. The company currently supplies communications beyond the line of sight from SATCOM stations to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) such as the Predator or Global Hawk. The UAS SATCOM link is part of its command and control system—one of three elements that comprise a UAS (with the other two being the vehicle coupled with its payload and the communications architecture), explained Britt Lewis, Intelsat General’s vice president of marketing and business strategy. “The UAV sends back two links—first, a small telemetry stream that talks to the basic health of the UAV itself and, second, the data stream from the UAV,” Lewis told MSMF.
A single UAV usually requires about 10 MHz in total bandwidth for its operations. A typical Predator system has four UAVs to support simultaneous operations or multiple sorties.
UAVs will demand increasing amounts of bandwidth over time, Lewis noted. A Predator currently has a primary 3.2-megabit return, but that will increase to 6.4 megabits this year. Over time, it will increase further to 16 Mbps and eventually to 45 Mbps by fiscal year 2015. Global Hawks can operate at data rates of up to 50 Mbps today, but they too will dramatically increase their requirements over time, eventually reaching 274 Mbps.
The demand for greater data rates will grow due to interest in using multiple sensors at the same time. Higher resolution cameras, meanwhile, will transit greater detail back to their command stations, requiring more throughput.
“Manufacturers and users want the ability to support multiple electro-optical, infrared or RF sensors that simultaneously work together,” Lewis stated. “They will continue to use a range of weapons as well on UAVs. They would like vehicles that have the ability to track laser spots and other designators as part of that. Ultimately, they are looking at communications capability where the UAV itself may be a communications relay package that would support communications from other manned or unmanned aerial platforms.”
In addition, UASs that have extra bandwidth capacity could share it on demand. Military forces also could fly more UASs with more bandwidth. Greater bandwidth would provide support for a greater range of missions, Lewis noted.
“Our current provision of services largely supports reconnaissance in theater. We also are supporting precision target location and designation as part of the mission. To a lesser extent, we also support signal intelligence,” he added.
Intelsat General provides Ku-band satellite communications services to its military clients, Lewis remarked, but the company also has plans to offer Ka-band services over the Y-Band Global SATCOM system. As commercial satellite providers have Ka-band readily available, the government should soon explore the conversion of commercial Ka-band to military purposes in the future to overcome any constraints in its ability to support a large number of UAV vehicles at very high data rates via the government’s Wideband Global Satcom system.
Officials at the company also suspect that UAVs may eventually leverage X-band systems for beyond-line-of-sight communication.
“The wider footprint offers the ability to not only downlink back to the command and control earth station but also to downlink the imagery directly to others. That may support faster response within the theater itself,” Lewis envisioned. Intelsat General provides bandwidth for communications to forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, and typically tests these services in the U.S. before deployment. That could change with expanded bandwidth availability. In addition, more bandwidth supply along more bands could overcome a general concern over whether data access will be available globally and quickly, Lewis said.
“A number of providers, including Intelsat, have relocated satellites over the Iraq and Afghanistan areas and have re-pointed spot beams to provision services to UAVs. Other industry compatriots have brought other satellites to bear and have wide footprints, which enables the UAV to have a wide coverage area,” Lewis commented.
A DIFFERENT DYNAMIC
While the United States owns its own satellites and relies on military and contractor operators, the United Kingdom leases its satellites from Astrium, a subsidiary of European defense giant EADS. EADS owns Astrium Space Transportation, which supports launchers and orbital infrastructure; Astrium Satellites, which provides spacecraft and ground segment support; and Astrium Services, which offers the development and delivery of satellite services.
The U.K. Ministry of Defence (MOD) procures communications services from Paradigm Communications Services, a company established by Astrium Services to deliver communications for the Skynet 5 satellites in support of the U.K. armed forces, explained Paul Millington, vice president of business development for Astrium Services.
Paradigm, through a private finance initiative, owns the entire system and provides an end-to-end communications service to include terminals onboard ships, spare terminals, logistics for terminal support, training to the Royal Navy for upgrades, and the space segment and terminations for the system.
“It’s a real MILSATCOM system,” Millington stressed. “The satellites are hardened and hardened against EMP interference, laser attack, and they have their own onboard anti-jamming facilities.” It’s extremely unusual for a civilian company to own a hardened satellite communications system that provides the highest levels of protection to meet military specifications, Rick Greenwood, Astrium Services technical director, told MSMF.
“All of the requirements that the U.K. government has for a military satellite have been met by the Skynet system, although it is run by a civilian company,” Greenwood declared. “Paradigm operates it and all of the operators have the level of security clearance necessary to understand the military operations at the time and take the appropriate actions to protect against anyone interfering with the satellite or the communications going through the satellite. We work closely with the U.K. military, and we are co-located in a satellite and network control center with some of those military people.”
The Skynet system has a very capable phased-array antenna that shapes SATCOM uplinks, Greenwood continued. The antenna enables the use of a nulling capability and a geo-locating capability that can block out unwanted interference or attempts to jam its signals.
“You can shape the beam around the forces you want to communicate with, thereby you automatically reduce the effect of the interference or active jamming outside of the area. We do that routinely,” Greenwood elaborated. “Then you can go into more active modes. If there is a perceived threat out there, or if there is an actual threat, then you can employ the nulling antenna. You can locate the jammer and then null it out.”
The Skynet 5 onboard receiver antenna has eight beam-forming networks, Greenwood added, six of which are operational. Each beam can cover 500–1,000 nautical miles. Computer operators can draw the shapes desired for the signals right on their screens. The communications system processes that information, working out the appropriate phase amplitudes and other details, in a cycle that takes only minutes.
Astrium Services supports three Skynet 5 satellites for the United Kingdom as well as two Skynet 4 satellites, often leaving plenty of extra bandwidth in its X-band and UHF communications services for lease to allied nations, Millington told MSMF. “We deliver different types of service, depending upon what the customer wants. Different countries want to buy things in different ways. Some people want end-to-end services like the U.K. MOD. Some people just want some capacity to use in their own networks,” he said.
Greenwood described the levels of survivability and availability attributes for those communications services.
“If they want a C+ survivability, we will use certain features. If they want A+ survivable service, which is guaranteed to ride through certain levels of threat, then we will use a different strategy using maybe protected multiple satellites, or we will predeploy nulling,” he said.
Astrium provides more than half of the X-band capabilities to NATO as well as X-band services to Canada, the Netherlands and even the United States. As a true military system that fits all NATO specifications, NATO nations lease the system with the comfort of knowing they are completely interoperable with other NATO nations, Greenwood added. ♦