Dan Losada is the Senior Director of the Defense and Intelligence Systems division at Hughes where he manages the Company’s Department of Defense (DoD) and intelligence-related programs. Dan is heavily involved in supporting C4ISR (Command, Control, Communications, Computers, and Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance) programs.

MilsatMagazine
Hi, Dan, it’s nice to have the time to talk with you. Is Hughes involved in all branches of the military?

Dan Losada
That’s correct. Hughes prides itself on the broad military and intelligence applications of our technologies. Our satellite broadband solutions support land mobile, maritime, or airborne in the U.S. Air Force, Navy, Army, and the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) to name a few. We support these customers in North America and across the globe.

MilsatMagazine
What does Hughes support?

Dan Losada
Hughes supports a range of strategic and tactical requirements. Some of our most exciting work involves our broadband communications on ambulances in the Middle East. We helped create a mobile telepresence to enable paramedics to communicate with specialists anywhere in the world.

The technology itself is impressive—but its importance really sinks in when you consider the “golden hour,” when proper patient stabilization and care can greatly increase the chances of survival, recovery, and reuniting with families back home. In addition, this last year we participated in an interesting, multi-agency exercise simulating a fictional bio-terrorism attack.

MilsatMagazine
Simulations are a hot topic right now. What part did Hughes play in that effort?

Dan Losada
We demonstrated our SATCOM-On-The-Move (SOTM) terminal, receiving a satellite downlink displaying images, data, and video from an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) into a mobile C2 van. The van, in turn, simultaneously sourced video that streamed to the command post while on-the-move.

MilsatMagazine
That’s interesting, Dan... how does that work?

Dan Losada
The “pilot” of the UAV can be anywhere on the planet. The video is downlinked via satellite, but this is a huge advancement because, previously, pilots had to be at a fixed site and were unable to transmit images directly from the UAV to soldiers on the ground. The only path involved a central hub at a fixed location.

MilsatMagazine
That location would be where the UAV pilot was actually located?

Dan Losada
Yes, the pilot had to process it and then send it to the people on the ground through some other communication network. That takes valuable time. SOTM enables a more mobile mode of communications requiring far less transmission time.

MilsatMagazine
Was this effort was a success?

Dan Losada
Absolutely. As mentioned, this was a massive, complex operation that included federal, state, and local government decision-makers, as well as first responders; in other words, all the players that would be involved in a real crisis.

MilsatMagazine
Dan, would you please provide some insight into your background?

Dan Losada
I am an engineer at heart and by training, so I approach all of these projects from the technical side and then moved forward from there. I have handled a great deal of technical project management, focusing on things such as Ka- and Ku-Band SOTM capabilities, processed and transponded satellite networks, microwave point-to-multipoint, as well as cellular and Personal Communications Services.

MilsatMagazine
Where did you go to school?

Dan Losada
I earned my Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and I also did some studying in Colombia, where I attended the Universidad de los Andes in Bogota. While there, I had the opportunity to serve as a technical consultant on the deployment of a point-to-multipoint network for the Universidad Antonio Nariño and worked on building a city-wide Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN). That is the great thing about this kind of technology — it’s universal.

MilsatMagazine
A typical question coming up about your career — what is best about working at Hughes?

Dan Losada
That is a tough question! Hughes is very much a global company, and every day I work with some of the most advanced satellite communications technology on the planet. We are helping the military and government become more global, too, as well as conduct their business more efficiently. Sometimes that means working on a SOTM terminal and sometimes it means building the kind of system we just launched our own satellite called SPACEWAY-3.

Our team has just been joined by Rick Lober, our new Vice President and General Manager. He came from Cubic Defense Inc. where he did a lot of work in high bandwidth links for UAVs. He wasalso with Watkins-Johnson in SIGINT and commercial telecom.

MilsatMagazine
Dan, can you tell us more about SPACEWAY-3?

Dan Losada
SPACEWAY-3 is a really unique solution. We know about routers and how they direct network traffic, whether on the Internet or via a closed network. Routers are really important, but in a crisis situation they jam up. SPACEWAY-3 is the world’s first satellite system that functions as an IP router in space.

This means that if something knocks out communications on the ground, you have both back-up and functioning back-up with built-in networking capabilities. These closed, secure networks equal peace-of-mind — and that is hard to come by in an emergency response scenario or national security crisis.

MilsatMagazine
Is that where you see Hughes moving in the future?

Dan Losada
I hope it is where we see the world moving in the future. This is vital to national security, defense, intelligence, and emergency response communities, serving their mission-critical information requirements. It is important to continue broadening our capabilities and exploring the role that satellites will play in the future.

In fact, we recently announced a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with DISA to study Network Centric Enterprise Architecture validation of IP networking with the Regenerative Satellite Mesh (RSM-A) standard and the SPACEWAY-3 system.

Under this agreement, Hughes and DISA will perform research and development that supports overall IP convergence as the basis for seamlessly integrating satcom networking and information needs with the Global Information Grid (GIG) — a worldwide set of information capabilities, associated processes, and personnel for collecting, processing, storing, disseminating, and managing information that was established by the DoD.

I am fortunate to be a part of such an exciting time at Hughes and part of the exciting future for satellite communications.