Expanding communications: 'transformational' satellite price tag could reach $18B.

faced with a bandwidth crunch prompted in part by multiplying flocks of unmanned aerial vehicles that are transmitting multi-megabyte pictures, Defense Department planners are counting on a new generation of communications satellites to expand capacity.

A constellation of six transformational satellite or TSAT spacecraft, comprising five satellites and one in-orbit spare, currently are slated for launch around 2011, according to Christine Anderson, systems program director for the MILSATCOM joint project office in Los Angeles.

Lockheed Martin and Boeing won $472 million in risk reduction contracts. In 2006, the Air Force will select a single prime contractor to build the satellites. For the ground-based segment of the system, $3 million research contracts were awarded to Lockheed Martin, Raytheon and Northrop Grumman. This contact will be awarded in 2005.

If the laser-equipped TSATs are launched, they will combine the best features of the menagerie of radio frequency (RF) communications satellites in orbit or scheduled for launch.

Communications satellites come in three flavors: narrowband systems that are useful for voice transmissions but lack sufficient capacity for large data streams, wideband systems for sending large amounts of data, and protected satellites that are hardened against jamming and nuclear effects. By way of comparison, the current ultra high frequency follow on (UFO) narrowband satellites transmit at a rate of two to five megabits a second.

UFO's successor, MUOS (mobile user objective system), scheduled for launch in 2009, transmits at 40 megabits a second. TSAT will have 25 to 45 megabytes-per-second RF links to users on the ground, plus 20-gigabyte laser communications connecting the satellites to each other. Thus, they will combine the bandwidth of wideband systems such as the Wideband Gapfiller satellite, with the protected links of spacecraft, such as the advanced extremely high frequency (AEHF) satellites.

A 24-megabyte visual image transmitted by a reconnaissance aircraft, for example, would require two minutes to be transmitted to a current Milstar 2 satellite. A TSAT would cur transmission time to less than one second.

Particularly cutting-edge are the laser optics that will connect the geosynchronous TSAT satellites into an integrated network. If a signal is transmitted to a TSAT that is not within line-of-sight of the recipient, it forwards the message through a laser connection to another TSAT that has line of sight.

Many current satellites are not interconnected, which means that If a satellite is not within line of sight of the destination, it must send the message back to a teleport on the ground to be relayed to another satellite in the constellation. While the AEHF constellation will be interconnected, it only uses slower RF links rather than lasers.

"Transformation communications is different than other satellites we've built in the past," Anderson said. "Think of it as laying fiber in space. What we're doing is laying fiber via the crosslinks between the satellites. And this provides a tremendous amount of connectivity we've never had before. Instead of going with a circuit to circuit system like we've done in the past with MUOS and Milstar, we're now going to an Internet protocol-based system that has all sorts of wonderful benefits to the user, such as communications while on the move. We call deliver T-1 class [1.5 megabits per second] communications to a vehicle."

This high-speed capability has limitations. For one, TSAT requires users on the ground to have dish antennas, which rules out foot soldiers, though not vehicles as small as a Humvee. Anderson said studies are underway to examine the feasibility of the new joint tactical radio system to communicate with TSAT.

Another problem is that TSAT's high-powered lasers suffer from weather, forcing it to use RF communications with the ground while reserving its lasers for receivers in space and in high-flying aircraft. "Laser communications has the advantage of extremely high bandwidth, orders of magnitude higher than RF," said Anderson. "But it cannot penetrate through cloud cover. You basically use it for cross-connecting in space, and also to link manned and unmanned aircraft."

Most damaging is a General Accounting Office report published last December that recommended that TSAT be delayed until its critical technologies, such as laser optics, high-speed router and security algorithms, are more mature. Most of these technologies are at technology readiness level (TRL) 3 or 4, according to GAO.

"When a technology is classified as a TRL 3, it means most of the work performed so far has been based on analytical studies and a few laboratory tests may have been conducted," the study said. GAO also pointed to a lack of backup technologies for critical systems such as laser communications.

Anderson, however, countered that GAO had based its report on a previous launch date of 2009 rather than the current 2012 time frame, and that the TSAT technologies have further matured. Joe Davidson, spokesman for the Air Force's Space and Missile Systems Command, said the risk reduction contracts awarded in January are intended to bring TSAT technologies to a mature TRL 6 level.

"Current experiments have already demonstrated the successful use of laser communications in space," Davidson said. Should the laser optics not work as advertised, TSAT satellites could be limited to transmitting at lower data rates, or designed with shorter life spans using more traditional technologies. For example, if TSAT's dynamic bandwidth resource allocation system, which boosts transmission power as needed, isn't mature in time, then the satellites could use fixed power allocation, according to Davidson.

By next November, the Defense Department must decide whether to go ahead with TSAT, or instead add two more AEHF satellites to the three AEHF craft slated for launch beginning in 2007.

TSAT's fiscal year 2004 budget has been cut by $100 million, which caused a nine-month delay.

The estimated system cost for TSAT through 2016 is $18 billion, which includes the satellite, the ground operations system, the satellite operations center and the cost of operations and maintenance.

TSAT proponents say that transforming satellite communications is key to military transformation. "TSAT is part of the vision to enable the overall packet-based transformations being instituted by the office of the secretary of defense and the services' next generation concepts," said Davidson. "You're not just providing users with a phone line, like the telephone company," Anderson said. "You're connecting them to the global information grid. If someone is moving through the desert, and they want to search all intelligence imagery of the area, they can do that."

Rear Adm. Rand Fisher, director of naval space technology programs and head of the Transformational Communications Office within NRO, oversees the transformational communications architecture (TCA), an ambitious effort to link three families of next-generation communications satellites.

The TSAT program is critical to this architecture, he said. While the Defense Department manages the TSAT, the intelligence community is working on the optical relay communications architecture. NASA manages the tracking and data relay satellite system (TDRSS-C).

"TCA introduces optical communications, which is far higher bandwidth than radio frequency communications," Fisher said. "It will also introduce 'packetized' information transport in an Internet protocol environment."

"Imagine yourself with just a phone with just audio information," Fisher said. "Now contrast that with voice and video data in a collaborative environment where you are sharing real-time information around the world and across defense, intelligence community and NASA boundaries.

"We know we have gotten information to commanders too late," said Fisher. "We find there was a lot of information available that we couldn't get to the right people at the right time. I hesitate to use the word 'crisis,' but I know at least some of our war fighters have at times thought of it as a crisis."

Fisher termed the GAO report "very pessimistic," adding that there is always risk inherent in new technologies, but sticking to only mature technologies will stifle innovation.

Fisher said there are two problems that concern him. First is the question of if and when TSAT will be deployed, especially in light of the GAO report. By next December, the Defense Department must decide whether to proceed with TSAT, or substitute additional advanced extremely high frequency system (AEHF) satellites.

Successors to the current Milstar system, three AEHF spacecraft are scheduled to be launched around 2007. But two more could be launched in place of TSAT. While AEHF has just one-twentieth the bandwidth capacity of TSAT, it has the advantage of using proven radio frequency communications rather than cutting-edge laser communications.

"If you believe that there is inherently too much risk in the program to not build an AEHF then the question becomes, 'do I take that money for the AEHF out of the TSAT side?'" Fisher asked.

"If we end up taking money from the TSAT line, we end up delaying TSAT, and then because we end up delaying TSAT, then we need to launch another AEHF If you keep taking money from the TSAT program, I'm not sure how you get anywhere. Every time you build an old satellite, you propagate the old architecture. That's the dilemma that we have."

Complicating the picture even further is the fact TCA functions at its best as an integrated triad. Though the military, intelligence, and NASA satellite constellations operate independently, they are designed to be compatible. Because each of the three communities is responsible for securing the funding for its own satellites, Fisher is concerned that the three programs won't be funded synchronously.

"It's both a community and a congressional issue," he added. "We are a large team in that regard. And when you have a large team, you call expect some natural stress or conflict and that all the team members don't gauge the priorities in precisely the same fashion."

Fisher, nonetheless, contends that launching the TSAT around 2011 is key. "Everyone we've chatted with, including people on Capitol Hill, really sees the need for the capability that the TCA brings. All of the services are making plans that are dependent on those capabilities. The desired position we would like to be in is to have enough confidence in the TSAT Version One that we would not have to buy AEHF 4 or 5."