SatNews

SVSW DAILY

Raytheon: “It is an exciting time to be working in space”

By Chris Forrester

Melinda Milani is Raytheon’s Area Director of its National and Tactical System (NTS) strategic business unit. NTS is a diverse portfolio with programs serving DoD and Intelligence customers by delivering solutions such as distributed tactical mission management, ground systems, software development, multi-source data sensing and fusion, space-rated avionics and electronics, data processing, and advanced payloads. 

She updated delegates attending the Silicon Valley Space Week with a valuable snapshot of one of the very largest contractors to the Dept. of Defense. She praised the event overall as being an “invigorating” conference where she could sense the passion in every speaker’s voice for their roles in the space industry.

Milani explained how in her years of experience and working with customers in space domain awareness, tactical mission control and sensing, and how she continues to be amazed by the benefits of working in collaboration. “Industry, government, civilian, military, domestic and our international partners. Today I can share how Raytheon is working in collaboration with many of you in this room and beyond to address our mission challenges.”

Raytheon is an RTX business (comprising Collins Aerospace, Pratt & Whitney and Raytheon) which serves customers in the commercial airspace and defense industries. “We provide complementary combined offerings and world-class engineering to deliver innovative solutions,” said Milani.

“We cover a lot of ground as a company. Our R&D divisions are collaborating like never before including with non-traditional partners and companies to find technology synergies and where operational lessons learned can prove life-cycle affordability across the board. Our industry must act to effectively integrate sensors and systems to enable multi-domain warfare.”

She said that space was far from an isolated domain. “Space is a critical enabler in a strategic environment. We are all aware that our adversaries are adapting, and we are in a race to outpace them.”  She explained that Raytheon and the industry was embracing new technologies with the mission’s timeline always being key.

“We have to get this critical information to the tactical edge faster than ever before. Our solutions are indispensable for modern warfare.”

Raytheon uses modern analytical tools to understand the tasks from its clients, government, military, NASA and the intelligence community. Raytheon was also very active in disaster relief work in the US and around the globe. 

Milani stressed that the space industry could not fall behind. “There is increased tension around the planet,” and she added: “We dare not be in a position where we are ‘out of time’.”

Satellite Spectrum Security: Jamming of PNT is child’s play

By Chris Forrester

Satellite spectrum security is rarely out of the headlines, even on the world’s front pages as well as in trade magazines. Ahsun Murad Co-founder, President/CEO Optimal Satcom reminded delegates that it was a spin-off from Lockheed Martin and Comsat in 2002. Optimal Satcom has since grown to support a large segment of the satellite industry with industry-leading enterprise-level software products and systems for resource management, service planning, optimization, and business intelligence. Over 15 satellite operators, 20 of the largest satellite service providers, and major US Government DoD and civilian agencies use Optimal Satcom products and systems today.

Mr Murad moderated the Satellite Spectrum Security panel at the Silicon Valley Space Week’s MilSat Sysmposium, and with a heavyweight panel of experts on the topic. He explained that security for satellites had totally come to the forefront since the war in the Ukraine. “Jamming was extremely disruptive, and damaging aviation and other aspects of our business, and even as far as GPS over the Baltic countries.”  There is a need for resilience, he said, and he asked the panel to review the satellite industry’s vulnerability and approach to overcoming the problem.”

Chris Badgett, VP/Technology, Kratos Space, Training and Cybersecurity. He first told delegates that he wasn’t Eron Musk but promised $1 to those who stayed to the end of the session and requested his pack of information! More seriously, he explained that even with GPS which was now near-ubiquitous but had been suffering jamming for the best part of 20 years and regrettably is a pretty easy service to jam.  But GPS is one slice of a signal and beam-forming, using LEO’s, using other operator’s devices meant there are ways to cope and there are mitigations that work, but it is going to require us to understand that there are fixes but in many cases we have to wait for them to come to fruition.

John White, Director/Space Projects, Aitech Defense System said that from the hardware standpoint there are things that can be done perhaps through filtering or blocking signals and our customers are aware of these and it is normal practice. But with these solutions they will still have aspects where the satellite is particularly vulnerable or less effective. A certainty is that there is no ‘one-size fits all’ solution. Worse, a fix can frequently open up other problems.  

Matthew Erikson, VP/Solutions, SpiderOak, added that the actual application of Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) is a real headache when even kids today can spoof their Pokémon gameplay to change their apparent location. At SpiderOak we are working with people in the PNT space to understand that when people might send – say – a simple Txt message. Well, how do you know that the sender’s location is a true one? Is the sender lying? We are looking at how to extend the expected assurances from user to user. 

Lee Kenyon, Senior Project Leader, The Aerospace Company, said that the fundamental solution for resilience is diversity. There are others, and for PNT in particular there is GPS and the other similar operations, there’s time transfer and ranging over communication links, sensor information, all of which can be fused together to have a better solution, and to help identify spoofed or invalid data. The challenge though is that fielding terminals with this type of sophistication is at a cost, and the DoD has a somewhat chequered history in fielding terminals and in particular dynamic solutions to reflect new innovations and threats. To fulfil these problems in a timely and cost-effective way is a significant challenge.

Mr Murad said that upgrading equipment was tough, given that refreshed systems seemed to be taking a number of years to appear. He asked were software solutions emerging? 

Badgett advised that small-form factor terminals were available, and the actual signal processing was lightweight. He suggested that products and solutions from Starlink and Kuiper were helping fill that gap. 

John White said that operators were increasingly using multi-faceted, multi-mode solutions. 

Erikson added that if physics rears its ugly head and you simply cannot find a solution using software then you can take the rest of the software with elements that are easier to port generation to generation. “Then perhaps the good folk here in Mountain View or Cupertino can come up with solutions that get refreshed every year or two. It is like the smartphones, how many software refreshes have there been which have enabled the core devices to become much more impressive?”

The panel were asked what the biggest threat for the DoD was today, and Badgett said it could be ‘blue on blue’, that was C- and X-band self-interference between commercial and DoD operations. He added that UHF, wonderful as it was also opens up problems with side-lobes and other challenges. Mr White agreed, but added that bandwidth limitations meant that those bands of spectrum were full. “One delegate to the conference had said that every pass of their satellite generated 21 Terabytes of data! The biggest risk is that lack of uplink and downlink speeds.”

The Navy: Demanding more bandwidth because “we’re engaged right now”.

By Chris Forrester

Kimberly Morris (Deputy, Space Operations, Naval Network Warfare Command) supplied delegates to the Silicon Valley Space Week and its MilSat Symposium with an impressive overview on her role at the Warfare Command.I n this role, she has supervision of Navy SATCOM Operations. She supervises the asset allocation and mission planning of the Navy’s Commercial Broadband Satellite Program. She is currently leading an initiative to demonstrate resilient SATCOM through proactive management and control techniques by using pre-allocated MILSATCOM compatible commercial capabilities as manoeuvre space. She retired from the US Marine Corps in 2014 after 20 years. 

It was her birthday on the day at the symposium and she thanked the organisers for NOT putting all of the candles on the cake they presented her with!

She reminded delegates that one of the challenges of having these naval responsibilities was being at sea, and thus not being able to run fiber-optic from the shore!  “So Satcom is a huge part of what we do and thus space is a huge part of what we do and dealing with those constraints.”

Her responsibilities extend to space situational awareness, space training and liaison with the DoD and joint space organisations on behalf of the navy as well as tactical communications for the navy across the globe. 

Morris said that in the past we were more or less king of the hill. That isn’t the case anymore, and the more people we have on the hill then the more elbows we have to contend with. She displayed recent news articles that summed up the position the military was now having to respond to. One ssid: “Russia escalates rhetoric on commercial satellites, calls them ‘legitimate targets for retaliation’ (Bloomberg News, October 27). Her comment was that some people were talking about being at war in a couple of years. “No, we’re engaged right now.” Another news alert talked about how Chinese satellites were breaking the US monopoly on long-range targeting.

She said these stories did not – yet – have a body count, but I have a front row seat to what’s happening. “Now, today, in October2 024, our ships at sea are engaged in the biggest set of combat operations since World War II.”

She explained that for obvious reasons there was very limited real estate on ships. “There’s a lot of electro-magnetic signatures on board a vessel, and we work in a very tough environment. And there’s no place to hide. Thene there’s the weather with its own set of constraints. Then there’s the everyday management of a strike force. We can be in the process of being moved to a location, perhaps a danger zone, and then things happen elsewhere, and we can be dispersed almost overnight with a new mission.”

She expected the navy to stay very much involved in narrow-band (“at least while I am in the navy”) but the major aspect is the weapons systems themselves and what they need. But when it comes to high bandwidth or low bandwidth we have to know what is best and most relevant for each application and use. And then have the means to immediately select the right one for the task. We are refining this all the time.

However, she said that using commercial SatCom space was once not on the agenda. Now, and in dialogue with the other services, we are dealing with how we can use some of their warfighting techniques with the resources available to us. We also realise and understand that we need deeper, more robust conversations with our other colleagues in this regard.

Can nuclear bombs threaten satellites?

By Chris Forrester

The threat of a nuclear explosion in space which affected satellites in orbit is – perhaps – too horrible to contemplate. But Dr Paul Struhsaker (CEO at Arrasar Partners) has to think the unthinkable. His roles include being CTO of Carnegie Technologies, and other responsibilities included SVP Software Engineering at Comcast NBC Universal, VP of Engineering at Cable Vision Systems, VP Silicon Platform at Motorola PCS, CTO of Dell’s Client Solutions Group, and CTO Broadband at Texas Instruments.  He addressed delegates at the Silicon Valley Space Week on October 24. 

“We are talking about a big bang, and back in February the Washington Post reported that the US House Intelligence Committee’s chair Mike Turner had made a statement about the threat to US satellites from a possible Russian nuclear-powered space asset.”

Dr Struhsaker stressed this was not a new issue, and indeed was covered by the 1967 Nuclear Test Ban Treaty and similar agreements made subsequently. However, back in 1962 the Thor test missile carried out by the US hurt the power grids over the whole Hawaiian Islands, and three satellites destroyed. In other words, these threats have been understood. 

“But our friends in Russia have also been active with similar activity, not least a Russian ‘test’ in October 1962, which was extremely damaging. “The long-term exposure to these EMG tests and radiation consequences can take years to decay.  One could argue that any similar explosion would kill friend and foe alike. Indeed, ground control operators are also likely to be vulnerable to nuclear attack (nuclear or non-nuclear) while the effects of a nuclear strike would be totally indiscriminate, harming all satellites of all nations in the affected areas.”

Dr Struhsaker suggested that while the most damaging consequence would be to craft in LEO orbits, Geostationary were not immune although the magnitude of the explosion would need to be in the 10 Megaton range and which would be a huge explosion. “All of us would suffer, whether US, or Russian or Chinese.  The consequences would also affect the region perhaps for years afterwards.”

There are other near-similar threats, not least ‘Brilliant Pebbles, a constellation of non-nuclear EMP bomb. Then there’s FOB, Fractional Orbital Bomb, and there’s high-power lasers in orbit and arguably this would also contravene the various test treaties.

SatComs: Working with government, and vice-versa

By Chris Forrester

Lori Gordon, Director, Space Enterprise Evolution Directorate, The Aerospace Corp. was given the enviable task of wrapping up the two previous day’s activity at the Silicon Valley Space Week and in particular the MilSat Symposium. She was more than qualified for the task having lead enterprise integration initiatives related to international competition and collaboration, commercial ventures, and legislative and regulatory frameworks in support of space infrastructure and economic growth, security, and resilience, all in the national interest.

Jeremy Leader, Dep. Director/Commercial Space Office (COMSO), US Space Force, and said his main ‘call to action’ for government was the risk of changing – but there also a huge risk in not changing! 

Alvaro Sanchez, President, Intergrasys (and the recent recipient of a Knighthood), told delegates that his company was already a major supplier to government but those government abilities and how they relate to the commercial world as essential. “It brings speed, ability, and flexibility. It is not good if government is travelling at 60 mph but commercial is travelling at 150 mph and thus government will never keep up. At the end of the day, we think industry must work with government. Government can easily benefit from commercial, while companies can adapt for government and this includes cyber-security, as well as different layers of security.”

Ben Bowen, Principal Business Development Manager, Amazon Web Services (AWS) told delegates that his main ‘call to action’ was not to be intimated by early discussions with government for start-ups. We at AWS can help with some certifications and clarifications to help businesses navigate those first steps. 

James Crean, President/CTO Crean Inc., a 650 employee business, said that the supply base had to consider scale, and how to take a magnitude of costs and cycle time in what they do (with a government contract). The moderator told the audience that Crean was famous outside the industry as having been on The Wheel of Fortune a couple of times, with a 25-year gap between two appearances!

Leader said that the relationship between the DoD and the commercial sector was already solid, and well-integrated. But the options are growing, and the SatCom markets needed to maintain awareness with government as to what they had on offer. 

Bowen argued that the commercial sector was more than competent in many, many areas. “Think of banking, and market trading, or other highly-secure commercial systems out there. We’ve got AWS Cloud security protocols and can help small commercial businesses can open the door for them to work with government.”

Crean said that in relative peacetime was easy to understand, and that users didn’t take kindly if their Google Maps was slow for whatever reason. But in times of high military demand on commercial operators their spike in demand could be huge. 

US Space Force: Preparing for new threats

By Chris Forrester

Maj Gen Rick Zellman, Deputy Combined Joint Force Space Component Commander at the US Space Command outlined for delegates how the military had transitioned from the days of the Cold War through early satellite activity and Early Warning satellites and to today’s position where space was tied to the strategic demands of war and protected by our nuclear deterrents. 

Maj Gen Zellman was delivering a fascinating Keynote for delegates to the Silicon Valley Space Week and its MilSat Symposium strand on October 24, and said that cash had being invested over the years to ensure that space and satellite was wholly enabled via its tactical embracing of space. 

The Russians today have tried to take away our advantage by interfering and countering all that we have and attempting to take our military back to the industrial age. The Chinese have really raised their game and developed sophisticated solutions. “So, what do we do?”

“We have to be more resilient. Our systems were proliferated, and we have what we have!  The first move is to work with our allies and working closely with them is a clear aim. On the commercial side we have invested in a group of like-minded companies but what we are doing is sharing some information on what we see as the threats. It is a good model. Then there’s the Joint Commercial Operation, with 3 locations (Australia, and at NATO and at Colorado Springs) and the data they receive comes from their commercial partners, and it is unclassified data and can be shared between us all.”

The other way to work with allies is to share our warfighting thoughts but there are limitations unless it is all unclassified. 

Maj Gen Zellman explained how wide-ranging the Space Command’s ambitions were especially when dealing with a growing number of allied friends, but how inevitably challenging it was when dealing with classified information.

He also addressed extremely up-to-date events from new threats from within the Middle East. He said Space Command’s first job is to warn about incoming missiles and on April 13, and when Israel was cautioned about incoming missiles. The matter of fact was that Israel was shooting down missiles, as were the US as were other allies. “There was no duplication. Everyone understood what they had to do. And when retaliation happened again there was no duplication. Everyone had access to the same core satellite data and training was superb, so that there was no duplication.”

He ended by saying how enthusiastic he was about logistics in space, and in particular refuelling satellites. “We wouldn’t send out a tank with just 500 gallons of fuel. We would have a back-up of fuel. We want to do this in Geostationary.”

DoD procurement and launch choices

By Chris Forrester

Jason Mello (CEO, The KMC Group) moderated the Launch Service Procurement session at the Silicon Valley Space Week’s MilSat Symposium on October 24, and said understanding what the DoD needed was extremely important. “Launch is the key part.” 

Clint Hunt (Director, Intelligence & Defense Programs, ULA) said that United Lauch Alliance had had a solid year and was looking forward to gaining authorisation for its system. He said the DoD found itself in a different position and while they might not be the major user of uplift services but they certainly have a vested interest in the services that are being placed into orbit today. They are users and customers, but the levers that the US government can pull gives the DoD an assured access to space. He said that ULA did not anticipate shifting away from Cape Canaveral or Vandenburg. 

“Reusability is simply a tool, and ULA has a strategy to reuse part of the rocket’s architecture. Our large rocket was designed for major launch efforts. The DoD has been flexible, in our belief, and the launch community has responded,” said Hunt. He added that ULA would be happy to look at non-US launch sites but it had to make a very strong business case and clearly win regulatory acceptance.

Brian Rogers (VP/Global Launch Services, Rocket Lab) said it was targeting mid-2025 for its Neutron debut launch and had some 42 satellites in its production backlog. He said space is not one place. There are many different missions, and cost-reduction is a big piece of that. With Neutron we have picked a place in the market where we think we can play a part. There’s congestion, which we all understand, and launch facilities overseas could free up that congestion. Rocket Lab has its own launch site which is active every two weeks, and this could be appealing to the DoD as a one-stop shop. He added that the trends for flexibility are there, and that includes working together with our allies and this includes international.

Rogers praised SpaceX and the recent Starship launch and said the landing was especially spectacular. But Starship needed filling up and while it made sense for SpaceX to fill it with its satellites, it might not be a choice for everyone.

Spain-based Dr Anibal Villalba (Chief Strategy & Public Affairs Officer at PLD Space) which is a European rocket launch company (Miura) with a facility at Kourou in French Guiana. He said that reusability was key for his business and the consequential reduction in price should be appealing to the DoD.  He said he felt there would be a demand for small launchers and also new spaceports are needed. “We need to be prepared for the threats and crisis to come.”

L3Harris: Leading the drive for bold action in space

By Chris Forrester

Lauren Barnes, President, Broadband Communications Systems, L3Harris Technologies, delivered a Prime Executive Presentation to delegates at the Silicon Valley Space Week’s MilSat Symposium. She updated delegates on how L3Harris Technologies was handling today’s space challenges and anticipating the future for commercial and defense demands.

She said L3Harris welcomed the development of small satellites were enhancing information in many areas and applications and welcomed the establishment of the US Space Force, a separate branch of the military. But she stressed that the space industry still needed to be bold and that new initiatives were required and that L3Harris firmly believed in these ambitions. “The possibilities are endless”.

Barnes welcomed the growing important of space awareness which would reduce the problems of orbital mishaps. These developments, she said, reflect the dynamic and rapidly evolving nature of the space-based industry today both in terms of commercial innovation and strategic defence initiatives. “It is also a very exciting time for space exploration and technology.”

“Space is the ultimate frontier, and it demands big thinking and even bigger collaboration. At L3Harris we understand that no single entity can conquer space alone.  By pooling our resources, expertise and vision we can tackle the monumental opportunities that space presents. This includes everything from satellite communications and space exploration to national security and beyond.”

“Our partnerships are not just big in scope they are also big in impact. Collectively we are driving advancements that ensure a safer tomorrow. But to address challenges in such a rapidly developing environment industry must deliver on bold initiatives. In the space industry being bold means taking risks and embracing new technologies and daring to venture into the unknown. Such bold initiatives must be driven by government and the industry itself. Both sides need to question the status quo and curtail timelines so that risk-based decisions can be delivered to the warfighter on relevant timelines.”

“L3Harris has always been at the forefront of these bold initiatives, from developing cutting edge satellite systems to pioneering new methods for resilient communications.”

Commercial Observation, and Hyperspectral Imaging

By Chris Forrester

Brian Weimer, Partner, Telecom Team Leader Sheppard Mullin, said his panel could addressed conventional imagery from visible through to hyperspectral sensing. The expert panel addressed the challenges during a session (‘Tooling Commercial Observation Services for Government Customers’) at the Silicon Valley Space Week’s MilSat Symposium held at Mountain View on October 24.

Frank Avila, Deputy Director, Source Operations Grp, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency was a buyer of all aspects of imagery. He compared conventional imagery with hyperspectral to a highly detailed police fingerprint in the amount of detail possible. However, he stressed that common standards was vital especially given that the Agency was looking at hundreds of satellites, and as well as needing the image it wanted to access the core information especially for first responders in times of catastrophe. Calibration of the assets was crucial. He added that there was a shortage of human talent and the NGA College had been established to help fill the knowledge gap. 

Tina Ghataore, CEO, Aerospacelab Inc. already has a series of satellites flying but wanted to satisfy both government and commercial requirements. She said they constantly looked at how the end result image would be interpreted and, for example, was the image a vehicle covered by camouflage netting? Her analytic tools had that skillset. She said was a daily visit enough, or more frequent visits essential, and what was the geometric accuracy? 

Alan Campbell, Principal Space Products Solutions Architect, Amazon Web Services (AWS) said that they were handling hundreds of Terabytes of data. The traditional model was for its satellite to pass over a target and for the data to be handled in a 15 minute window, but end-users wanted speedier latency and they were now satisfying those demands. AWS was enthusiastically using AI and machine learning team and in particular to enhance accuracy.

Tara Gattis, Strategic GEOINT Advisor & SME, Orbital Sidekick, was using AWS for its Cloud storage and pipeline delivery and said Orbital Sidekick would be adding new technology to its next iteration of satellites. She said that the processing pipeline was good once the image was received and the data could then be processed within an hour, but the bottleneck was frequently the download from the satellite.

Askash Parekh, CCO, Pixxel, was also using AWS although used its own ‘sandbox’ platform could be able to make it super-easy for customers to access hyperspectral imagery. It was not a downstream analyst player, but provided its data and tooling set for examining the data and the imagery. It is fair to say that hyperspectral is complex, he said. “At Pixxell we normally manage the data’s interpretation in 72 hours, but we are working to handle different demands depending on the user, and are handling most request in 6 hours, but can manage down to 30 minutes when the demand exists. But imagine the amount of data coming in per image. It can be Terabytes so compression is crucial, and then it is a question of how much could be spent in analysing 25 or more bands of data and thus achieving a sweet spot.

New spaceports aplenty, but challenges remain

By Chris Forrester

“Everything starts with spaceports,” said Chris Quilty of Quilty Space and who was the moderator of the MilSat Symposium’s session on future spaceport activity. 

Lloyd Damp, the CEO of Australia’s Southern Launch facilities and who updated delegates to the progress made on Australia’s two pioneer spaceports but he was stuck in Adelade for a major event. He was helped on the panel by John Leslie (the Trade & Investment Director, Space & Defence North America for the Australian Trade & Investment Commission).

Leslie said Australia was near-perfect in that its East coast was beneficial for launches and helped with sparse populations and little aircraft and maritime activity, or RF traffic. “However, the challenges are huge. For the US to be happy to use our Australian facilities we had to have in place suitable regulatory approvals as well as technical facilities prepared. The regulatory negotiations started in 2018.”

Mr Quilty said there were a huge number of new launch sites being developed around the world. “But location is key,” said Quilty, who said he doubted whether all of them would be commercially successful.  

Mark Lester CEO, Pantigo Lester, said that new spaceports needed common infrastructures in place. There needed to be permissions in place and not least confidence in a spaceport’s ability to take good care of a ‘foreign’, ie US rocket and satellite asset. “It is probably fair to say that wherever you launch from you still need an FAA license to be in place, and better to have been an established dialogue between the new spaceport and its regulators in order to manage risk as well as to provide the obvious benefits for possible speed to launch.” He said there are inevitable logistics costs, and in getting your essential commodities to a new launch site. 

Nate Gapp, Program Manager & Global Partnerships Lead, Defense Innovation Unit, Space Portfolio said establishing new launch sites was a major, major effort despite the logic of the diversification. Working with our allies helps hugely.