Milsat News and Products of Note

Milsat News and Products of Note

Unmanned aerial vehicles and manned aircraft are increasingly being used as vehicles to capture intelligence data for defense, state and civil applications. The aerial vehicles are equipped with technology for both video and data collection that are communicated to a command centre for further processing. When outside the reach of direct data relays due to distance or environment (e.g. mountainous regions) satellite communications will be used for beyond-line-of-sight (BLoS) communication.

Operating under an Emergency Certificate of Authorization (COA) from the Federal Aviation Association, University of Alaska Fairbanks Geophysical Institute researchers are using the Scout to prepare for the arrival of Russian tanker, Renda, carrying vital fuel supplies to the remote community of Nome Alaska.

NGOs (Non-Governmental Organization), also known as the “third sector”, are playing a pivotal and catalytic role around the world in empowering and spurring communities to achieve sustainable development. According to analyst reports, NGOs are significant economic players that account heavily in some countries for GDP figures.

Software Defined Radio (SDR) is a well-established concept in the military domain where the radio is no longer the physical manufacturing of a single waveform but becomes a computer host onto which different waveforms can be loaded. The military have been studying SDR for a long time and has adopted the Software Communication Architecture (SCA) as the “de-facto” standard upon which different solutions can be developed.

Each year, the Naval Research Laboratory leads or participates in numerous space projects in various stages of development. Normally, these culminate in a launch every few years, or perhaps a launch or two in a single year. This year, for example, the TacSat-4 satellite is ready for launch and two NRL experiments were transported to the International Space Station on Space Shuttle Endeavour.

Our nation has a truly impressive array of space-based capabilities supporting our armed forces. However, much of this support is focused at the strategic and operational levels of war. There are several areas of desired improvement in the space force enhancement mission area at the tactical level of war that could be addressed by small, very inexpensive satellites dedicated for use by tactical land warfighters. New trends in the miniaturization of electronic components are leading to smaller satellites with significant capabilities in the nanosatellite (1-10 kg) and microsatellite (10-100 kg) classes.

The unprecedented budgetary pressure imposed on the military and the Department of Defence, combined with the increasing need for additional satellite bandwidth, creates a growing gap between demand and availability. Bridging this gap is a major and pressing challenge for the defence sector.