Rebecca Grant
Low Earth Orbit – known as LEO – is the future for communications satellites. It’s also a high-value domain for national security. And it’s getting crowded. Elon Musk’s Starlink has over 5500 satellites on orbit and just launched 23 more Friday morning. Amazon is putting $10 billion into its LEO constellation named Kuiper that will build out to 3,236 satellites. To get half the constellation up by 2026, Amazon just carried out the largest-ever block buy of satellite launches.
Then there is the Space Force. Hundreds of new, smaller satellites in LEO are taking over many critical functions from missile warning to tactical targeting and communications. The project is called the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture. Tranche 1 of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture is being launched now, with 172 satellites for regional coverage, to be followed by another 216 satellites in Tranche 2 that will give warfighters complete global access. Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and York Aerospace have all built Tranche 1 satellites and won contracts for more in Tranche 2. SDA says Tranche 3 won’t launch until 2028, leaving room to define new capabilities.
Just as the United States Navy ensures freedom of navigation for maritime trade, the Space Force and commercial companies are going to find themselves working together. In fact, important aspects of US national security may rest on how well the Space Force and its commercial partners learn to work together to keep data flowing in LEO.
The rush to LEO is made possible by affordable satellite and launch costs and, a staggeringly good business case. LEO is just 550 km away versus geostationary orbit or GEO at 35,786 km. Satellite internet in the past came from GEO because the coverage was better; but at those distances, latency limited streaming, gaming, and other data-intensive activities. LEO speeds up data transfer. It isn’t perfect: there is atmospheric drag, solar weather, and higher fuel consumption to contend with. However, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr hit the nail on the head when he said “this latest generation of low Earth orbit satellites is absolutely a game changer.”
China is also attracted to LEO. “The CCP has set their goals on dominating a lot of technology sectors, but one of them is this low Earth orbit satellite system,” Carr said. China identified LEO as a national priority back in 2020. National champion Guowang plans for an initial phase of 1,296 LEO satellites and a constellation of 12,000 later.
The first role for Amazon and other commercial constellations in LEO is to keep the US ahead in this critical market. In turn, the Space Force will almost certainly have to assist with deconfliction amongst the satellites, especially when China is in the mix.
LEO satellites are already at the tactical edge of the battle in Ukraine, where SpaceX Starlink has been used for drone operations, for example. However, as more tasks migrate to LEO, commercial constellations like Kuiper may become a major national security resource for operations around the globe.
The Pentagon has long tapped civilian merchant ships and airlines for reserve capacity in a crisis. From a national security perspective, the beauty of the mesh network in LEO is that if one satellite falls out, another can replace it. The Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture will carry very different payloads from Kuiper, of course.
Like the Space Force’s satellites, the Kuiper constellation employs a laser link between satellites to transmit data. The optical laser link technology forms a mesh network between satellites. Amazon said their Kuiper-1 and Kuiper-2 satellites connected and transmitted at the rate of 100 gigabytes of data per second while 621 miles apart, which is a good start. The Kuiper satellites will carry multiple optical terminals and will provide numerous paths to routing data through space and forestall jamming.
The Space Force wants to be able to bring the constellation and data relay back up even if some satellites are hit. “When it comes to being able to reconstitute many of our constellations, we’re going to be looking for the civilian companies to do that,” said Pepper. At that point, the commercial satellites “may become a defended asset,” Pepper added.
Moving forward, “we’re going to be looking for commercial to augment us in times of conflict and crisis as we’ve seen some of the commercial vendors being used and leveraged in Ukraine right now,” said Brigadier General Devin Pepper, Deputy Commanding General, Operations, and Vice Commander, Space Operations Command, U.S. Space Force at a Mitchell Institute Forum last year. “They may become the most important satellite that we’re using at that moment.”
Keeping the internet working in a conflict area can deliver strategic benefits, too. When Russia tried to disrupt Ukraine’s internet in the first days of the invasion in 2022, Ukraine migrated services to the cloud. That “denied Russia the information environment that they were seeking,” said Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Cyber Mieke Eoyang. But it didn’t stop there. “We saw the value of the Ukrainian people being able to continue to tell their story to the world,” Eoyang pointed out.
If the scenario is fast-forwarded to a Taiwan scuffle or a nation under Chinese influence in Africa, commercial constellations like Kuiper, with its variety of terminals, could help prevent bad guy information lockouts by extending internet access. That’s a strategic benefit.
With all the mutual tactical and strategic benefits, it’s time for the Space Force and commercial LEO constellation owners to build a robust partnership.
No comments:
Post a Comment