The satellite industry tackles the most critical and necessary elements of communnication every second of every hour of every day — satellites do not rest.
Without the talents, expertise and innovative approaches taken by the thousands who create the next generation of intra- and inter-satellite links that tie our world and space together, havoc could well be the result.
As Senior Columnist Chris Forrester reported from Silicon Valley Space Week, this year’s Milsat Symposium event offered many of the military/agency/government (MAAG) market segments leading experts presenting their thoughts and knowledge to the more than 1,000 attendees over the two day, MilSat Symposium trade event — the end result? The realization that New Space is being driven to even greater heights and success.
Compliance needs
dialogue between
both sides
Silicon Valley Space Week’s Milsat Symposium 2024 opened October 23 with a compelling session (‘Optimized Creation of DoD Compliant Satellite Systems’) and a packed auditorium for its exemplorary panel of industry experts.
Moderator Janna Lewis, SVP/Policy & General Counsel, Astroscale US, told delegates that the topic was highly relevant and crucial in knowing how to satisfy the DoD in its aim to achieve compliant systems.
Col. Nathan Iven, CTO/Innovation Officer, U.S. Space Force, was asked what is driving the DoD’s needs. “The real driver for us is providing capability for the joint force in the face of a threat. The challenge from China, for example, has grown 500%, and they increasingly test us as does Russia with electronic warfare.”
Debra Facktor, Head of Airbus US Space Systems, and asked whether industry understood the needs, she said it came down to the ‘Why’ of what was required to be done. She explained that there are plenty of example of satellites that also needed protection, not the least of which are weather satellites as well as communication craft. Cyber compliance is crucial so that we, and our international partners, can meet the DoD goals. She said the government’s ‘industry days’ were perhaps too few — “The more dialogue helps eliminate confusion and mostly it is having access.”
Jonny Dyer, CEO, Muon Space, addressed the threat landscape and said that better education for commercial suppliers as to the threats is important, but there’s a huge part to play for commercial suppliers because we can move rapidly. “Cost-plus contracting is extremely difficult and probably impossible for us. We would like the government to place firm, fixed price, contracts.”
Maj.Gen. Steve Butow, Space Portfolio Director, Defence Innovation Unit (DIU) was asked whether there was a tension between the DoD and its commercial suppliers when the supplier might not be aware of the larger picture.
He admitted this could be the case because in many ways “We are building the airplane when it
is already in flight.” The Space Force does an extraordinary job and are very forward in adopting commercial solutions, but remember that our requirement for compliance is so that we can procure. The DoD is not, however, a regulator.”
David Langan, Co-founder and CEO, Umbra, told delegates that the first task was to study what was required, and to fully understand whether it was Cyber secure and to know what had been achieved in the past. “I don’t think anyone on the procurement side is looking just to tick boxes. In my experience everyone is looking to make progress.”He highlighted the additional challenges that cost- plus placed on a supplier, not least the regulatory burden.
Johann Bradley, Technical Consultant, Brainstorm Technologies, said communications were key and, while initial requests were valuable, he also liked government reference architecture for what were often complex tasks. For the future, he welcomed the systems now in place where knowledge and progress could be shared and which allowed communication from both sides.
To read the complete MilSat Symposium posting, please access this link.
Handling multi-mission,
multi-orbit data traffic
Phil Carrai, President, Space, Training & Cyber Division, Kratos, moderated the panel that examined the topic — The Multi-Orbit, Multi-Mission, Multi-Tech Network.
Matt McGuire, Principal Director, Booz Allen Hamilton, touched on Artificial Intelligence (AI) in his response and the differences it would make.
Rika Nakazawa, Chief Commercial Innovation, at Japan’s NTT, said that the use cases coming on line from commercial applications and there was a convergence between commercial and military and it is now essential to be ready to achieve the risk-mitigating elements and handle the data being generated.
“Data management is already crucial. We talk about optical, and we talk about cross-links, but getting data to and from space is the challenge,” said Brad Bode, CTO, Atlas Space Operations.
Dan Adam, President, KSAT, called for greater use of standards but also called for more spectrum for control and data transfer purposes. “We need alternatives.”
Art Loureiro, Director, Space Defence Solutions, L3 Harris said multi-domain had different meanings depending on who you were talking to. “Consolidating multi-mission into a single satellite, especially for the military, adds risk.”
To read the complete MilSat Symposium posting, please access this link.
Lockheed Martin:
Collaboration will
lead to a time
of growth
Johnathon Caldwell, VP/GM Strategic & Missile Defense Systems, Lockheed Martin Space delivered a prime executive presentation at the Silicon Valley Space Week and the MilSat Symposium sessions. Mr. Caldwell said the next 10 years will see AI consume huge amounts of our electricity output and an attack on GPS will be a direct attack on the Grid. He painted other challenges that business and consumers could inevitably face if space assets were affected.
He praised the role of Silicon Valley and its businesses and its cooperation between military and civilian activity and how it sparked innovation and which came out of defence technologies. But he said in his experience, he had seen capital come into the industry, and capital vanish. Then the cash went into fiber- optic and space investment was diminished.
Caldwell said that Lockheed Martin was embracing new standards but open architecture was the new mantra. He said the industry would be nimbler if open standards were adopted and it was not necessary for government to be involved.
He explained that Lockheed wanted to get involved with outside ventures and form business entities to solve new problems and in particular in the design and AI spaces.
To read the complete MilSat Symposium posting, please access this link.
SDA is flexible
but price is
important
Dr. Derek Tournear, Director, Space Development Agency, (SDA) delivered a fascinating Keynote
at the MilSat Symposium. With hundreds and hundreds of warfare satellites (tranches) potentially on-orbit, and moving data in real time and handling warfare threats and activity, the SDA has a full and demanding set of complex objectives. Dr. Tournear said that his mission was on schedule with the first 27 craft already on-orbit.
He explained that the world had moved on from the day when the key objective was to protect and supervise the first 300 miles or so and where an enemy threat was anticipated. Today, the need is much, much greater and the SDA has demonstrated that it can also handle missile threats when using LEO satellites.
Dr. Tournear updated delegates on the SDA scheme’s planned schedule up to and including the Tranche 3 batch of satellites which should be in place starting in 2029.
In a fast-moving presentation he told delegates about cooperation with foreign nations such as Australia, and these would continue.
He responded to critics who were suggesting that the SDA was moving too quickly and that Tranche 0 lessons could not be incorporated into Tranche 1 because of the speed of development. He said price was incredibly important, and the schedule accepted that cost versus capability meant that, with a need for hundreds of satellites, the lessons learned would be incorporated, but price was ever-important!
To read the complete MilSat Symposium posting, please access this link.
More cash and
better coordination
between agencies
Randy Segal, Partner, Hogan Lovells kicked off her session (Government Funding Channels for the Space Defense Industry) and asked what the government could additionally do to support delegate’s investment activity?
Jonathan Lusczakoski, Principal, AE Industrial Partners, gave an example — the aircraft industry and
neither Boeing or Airbus make 50 or 100 aircraft and then pause and then make another batch. “They have non-stop, ongoing production and the satellite industry needs to do the same.”
Tom Gillespie, Managing Partner, In-Q-Tel, said that government awards were improving over the past year or so and that more cash should go to Tier 2 businesses.
Dr. Timur Davis, Head of Transportation Sector, Munich RE Ventures said that government had stepped in and replaced, to a certain extent, the lack of funding from the commercial sector but still decision-making was opaque and that made life really challenging.
Devin Brande, Director of Commercial Operations Grp., National Geospatial Intelligence Agency (NGA,) said he was fortunate at the NGA that today it had the great good fortune of being able to select from multiple sources but we should not take this for granted.
Ric Mommer, Commercial Engagement & Investor Relations, Space Portfolio at the DoD, said commercial satellite communications was an easy example of dual use, for military and commercial, and there are opportunities to improve interoperability. “We are working to enable commercial capabilities to work between commercial providers to help the US government and to share information across our allies architecture.”
To read the complete MilSat Symposium posting, please access this link.
AI and its
use in defense
infrastructure
Many of the MilSat Symposium sessions within the Silicon Valley Space Week have talked about Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its impact on the space industry generally. A complete panel session was devoted to AI that was moderated by Dr. Eric Anderson, President, And One Technologies.
Dr. Anderson asked whether ChatGPT and other large language models was making life easier. Col. Heather Bogstie, Deputy, Space Systems Integration Office (BZ), US Space Force – Space Systems Command (SSC), said that the large language models needed to be wholly trusted and more could be used in mission operations, acquisitions and everyday tasks. AI was helping SSC understand missile warning data, and other battle space purposes so that the operators had a better picture as to what was happening.
Dr. Brian Barritt, CTO, Aalyria, gave examples and praised AI’s ability to help his company respond to government solicitations and to reply in language that the potential contract was using. He added that there was a role for AI, and talked about how multi-beam satellites and their millions of permutations on the use of spot beams.
Evan Rogers, Co-founder/CEO, True Anomaly, said there was a key advantage of AI in reducing human operator workload and speedily interpreting changes.
Maj. Gen. (Rtd) Kim Crider, Founding Partner, Elara Nova, said there were many examples of AI use in space and where large volumes of data and interaction was needed.
Col. (Rtd) Todd Brost, Director of Business Development (DoD), Slingshot Aerospace, used AI on its collection of telescopes and AI helped with a DARPA contract on identification tasks, and mega-constellations and how a satellite might have a different payload or capability.
To read the complete MilSat Symposium posting, please access this link.
How to blossom
in a multi-domain
world
Preston Dunlap, CEO at Arkenstone Ventures, moderated the Enabling Multi-Domain Space Operations session and told delegates that “multi” had featured in almost every session at the Symposium, but that his session would drill down into what was important, and the risks and opportunities in the next decade.
Tim Sills, Lead Security Solutions Architect, Amazon Web Services (AWS) that AI was the key topic and the Cloud, and making the technology available for its satellite customers and how to drive insights into usage as fast as possible, reducing latency and getting the information to where it was needed, was key.
Dr. Jun Asakawa, Co-founder/CEO, Pale Blue, said it was already clear that satellite was a key infrastructure for everyone’s daily lives. But the next decade could see us wanting GPS on the Moon or Mars, and certainly beyond GEO.
Dr. GP Sandhoo, VP and Chief Architect, Quantum Space, looked at the 10-year period from the view of space and how space itself would become the biggest strategic shift and would require the support of the other crucial domains.
Karan Kunjar, Co-founder/CEO at K2 Space Corp., said that, for him, the biggest shift would be in LEO and how today’s presence in LEO would develop from today’s craft, which hande just 1 or 2 kilowatts of power, to raising that power level because almost every application needed more power.
John Rood, CEO at Momentus, admitted that it was difficult to highlight just one thing that would specifically change over the next 10 years. His bet was that today’s multi-domain activity would grow on a scale that has not yet been achieved and in a degree of sophistication and synchronicity in all domains.
To read the complete MilSat Symposium posting, please access this link.
LEO-based GPS:
the U.S. is
falling behind
Brian Manning, CTO and Co-founder at Xona Space Systems delivered an overview on the state of the satellite navigation sector. He focused on
the race for next-generation PNT technology, which was already part of Xona’s role give, that his company’s PULSAR was designed to deliver more than 100 improvements in accuracy and resilience direct to GPS devices from a constellation of small satellites in LEO.
“Of late, it (GPS) has fallen behind. China has more satellites. Galileo is more accurate. China has better high-performance services, including messaging, which does not feature on GPS at all.”
“The way we drive is evolving, the way we farm is evolving, the way we travel, and work and fight. All are evolving and very, very quickly.” Autonomous vehicles need centimeter accuracy to know which side of the road they are on, and whether they are in the middle of a lane. LEO-based PNT will be stronger and more resilient and robust against interference and achieve centimetre levels of accuracy.
To read the complete MilSat Symposium posting, please access this link.