Milsat News and Products of Note

Milsat News and Products of Note

General Campbell joined Iridium from Applied Research Associates (ARA), where he served as Principal, Defense and Intelligence, since 2004. General Campbell joined ARA following his retirement from the U.S. Air Force after a 32-year career. In the U.S. Air Force, General Campbell served in a variety of operational and staff assignments worldwide. From 1998 to 2000, he was Vice Director of the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) and was the first commander of the Joint Task Force - Computer Network Defense. From 1997 to 1998, he served on the Joint Staff as Deputy Director for Operations. Between 1971 and 1997, General Campbell served around the world in a variety of operational assignments as an F-15 and F-16 fighter pilot and commander. General Campbell is the recipient of numerous military and intelligence community awards, including the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, the Air Medal, the National Imagery and Mapping Agency Award, the National Reconnaissance Distinguished Medal, and the National Security Agency Award. He is a graduate of the University of Kentucky with a degree in Computer Science and a Masters of Business Administration. General Campbell is responsible for all aspects of Iridium’s relationship with its U.S. government customers.

Steve Gizinski is responsible for leading the division’s operations, strategy and planning. He brings to this role more than 20 years of in-depth expertise in overseeing mission-critical technology efforts for commercial, federal, intelligence and homeland security customers. Prior to joining Integral Systems, he served in management positions at Northrop Grumman and Boeing. At the latter, he founded and led Boeing’s Satellite Applications Center in Herndon, Virgina, where the principal focus was on implementing and maintaining regional and global communications solutions based on satellite and terrestrial technologies. Mr. Gizinski holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Central Florida and a MS in Systems Management from the University of Southern California.

As DoD, NASA, and other U.S. government agencies increasingly consider alternative means of getting payloads to orbit in order to save time and money, greater consideration is being given to having those payloads hosted on commercial satellites. While the use of commercial satellites to host government payloads has proven effective, it is an approach that has a range of risks as well as rewards. Successfully launching a payload on a host satellite requires an understanding of the nature of commercial satellite business and technical operations. Futron Corporation has developed a guidebook that is intended to clarify those operational issues and help government customers plan to use the process to their best advantage. The following is excerpted from their highly informative HPA startup treatise.

SES WORLD SKIES, USG Solutions will host an experimental U.S. Air Force sensor on an SES satellite operating over the United States. The CHIRP flight demonstration program will test a new type of infrared sensor from geosynchronous orbit. This sensor will be integrated onto SES-2 and the data it receives will be transmitted to a ground station for analysis.

With its large population, diverse environment and unique geography, Los Angeles is a one-of-a-kind place that is not easily comparable to other cities. Yet just like other cities, it has its share of strengths and challenges — Los Angeles is the second most populous city in the U.S., with a population of more than 4 million. If you include the urban area of L.A. beyond the city limits, the population increases to more than 15 million, making it one of the largest urban areas in the world. To support its large population, L.A. is intertwined by a large road infrastructure of highways and freeways. The Texas Transportation Institute ranked its road traffic as the most congested in the U.S. in 2005.

The requirement for real-time sharing of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) information continues to grow in the military and homeland defense communities – making airborne video surveillance crucial to operational success, no matter where. Deployed troops in Afghanistan need to be able to determine if mountainous or urban areas are safe for transport. Homeland security agents responsible for monitoring thousands of border miles need to be able to communicate information regarding illegal crossings and drug enforcement, to name just a few examples. In these and many other scenarios, airborne video surveillance has become essential to help keep troops and public servants safe, while improving the efficiency and effectiveness of communications from the air…and ensuring mission success.

The quicker soldiers can receive updated and accurate information, the more effective they become. Airborne satellite communications is playing its part in this new paradigm, allowing our military to communicate in the air with troops at sea, on land, and deployed in remote locations, where terrain and range can interfere with communications signals.

Selected to upgrade the U.S. Army and Marine Corps Blue Force Tracking network, ViaSat brings real-time situational awareness and better networking capabilities to the warfighter with BFT-2. ViaSat’s next-generation Blue Force Tracking transceivers provide dramatic improvements in situational awareness through faster Position Location Information (PLI) refresh rates and greater information throughput features. This BFT-2 system delivers improved network efficiency and reduces the Department of Defense’s total operational expenditure for the specified capability.