Hosted Payloads Might Be Pentagon's Affordable Way into Space
The U.S. Defense Department’s experimental “pathfinder” hosted payload satellite program might be the feasible short-term middle ground sought between commercial satellite providers and the federal government, which have haggled over high costs for commercial-based bandwidth services.
The U.S. Defense Department’s experimental “pathfinder” hosted payload satellite program might be the feasible short-term middle ground sought between commercial satellite providers and the federal government, which have haggled over high costs for commercial-based bandwidth services.
The U.S. Air Force plans to use hosted payloads on commercial systems to gain affordable access to space. The Space and Missile Systems Center awarded an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract under the Hosted Payload Solutions (HoPS) program this July, which created a pool of qualified vendors to fulfill federal needs for various hosted payload missions.
The HoPS program's nearly $500 million contract provides flexibility for up to six hosted payloads and would net fully functioning on-orbit and ground systems services for government-furnished hosted payloads on commercial platforms.
“The renewed interest in hosted payloads is good for all of us,” David Bair, president of Eutelsat America, said during a meeting hosted this week by the Washington Space Business Roundtable. “With the renewed emphasis on cutting costs … and things like that, [pathfinder] does provide the government with a very economical way to get into space.”
But it’s a possible short-term fix that need not draw attention from efforts to finding long-term working solutions between the Defense Department and commercial satellite providers, argued panelist Philip Harlow, president and chief operating officer for XTAR.
“There are significant steps that can be taken by the DOD, they must be taken, to enable them to save money,” Harlow said. “The major problem we have is that there is some inertia in the DOD and … it does not serve their interest for there to be a greater reliance on commercial. They prefer to have their own systems.”
Yet, the military’s reliance on commercial technology has grown over the years, and the military’s unmanned platforms, for example, rely solely on commercial companies.
The Defense Department spends between $600 million and $800 million annually for fixed satellite service and an additional $200 million to $300 million on mobile and enhanced mobile satellite services.
Military leaders are investigating alternative means to acquire commercial satellite communication services, including multiple-year leasing and upfront investments in commercial capabilities in an attempt to decrease the cost, according to the Defense Information Systems Agency, which manages 70 percent of the Defense Department's commercial satellite leases.
A Defense Department report prepared for Congress stated the government spends four times more for commercial satellite bandwidth than it does on the U.S. Air Force-owned and operated Wideband Global SATCOM system.
The government’s own assessment goes to the heart of the discourse and complaints by commercial companies, which say costs could be lowered if they could rely on long-term contracts from the military. As it stands, the government budgets for commercial satellite bandwidth one year at a time, paid out of contingency funding, instead of committing to longer-term contracts. Pentagon officials have said procurement for services rules obligate one-year leases.
Congressmen Jim Bridenstine (R-OK) and Mike Rogers (R-MI) are pushing for legislative changes to the National Defense Authorization Act that would permit the long-term commitments. The legislation is useful because it lets those on the inside who want to “champion change to be bold and to actually do things without getting their legs kicked out from underneath them,” said Tip Osterthaler, president and chief executive officer of SES Government Solutions.
“If DOD doesn’t become a smarter buyer, the costs are always going to be high,” Harlow said. “What we’re concerned about, as satellite operators, is having capacity in the sky where DOD needs it … and suited to operations.”
The answer might not be building more satellites, but capitalizing on existing technologies, offered Peter Hadinger, president of the U.S. Government Business Unit of Inmarsat Incorporated. “A solution might be to develop terminals that … will operate across both commercial and military resources. It won’t require new launches and new capabilities to accomplish, yet would go a long way toward improving the interoperability of these systems, while reducing the costs to the government using commercial where it’s best used—which is filling between the gaps.”
Already, commercial providers employ some of the protections the military requires for satellite communications, such as data encryption and steerable beams to evade jammers.
The government's “Satellite Communications Strategy Report” encourages a “pilot program to leverage working capital funds to serve as a test bed for new business models. That’s pretty encouraging. That’s not something we would have talked about a year or two ago,” Osterthaler said.
