27 décembre 2018 | International, Aérospatial, C4ISR
by Sandra Erwin
The Air Force is developing software and ground equipment to boost the protection of the Wideband Global satcom system. First in line for the upgrade are naval carrier strike groups. The Navy will get the new technology in 2022, about 18 months sooner than previously planned.
WASHINGTON — The Air Force is cyber hardening military satellite communications equipment amid worries that foreign hackers could infiltrate U.S. networks.
“Adversaries are getting better and more able to penetrate our unclassified or barely protected systems,” said Col. Tim Mckenzie chief of the advanced development division for military satellite communications at the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center.
The bulk of military satcom services are provided by the Air Force Wideband Global Satcom, or WGS, satellites and by commercial operators. All these systems require additional protection from cyber attacks, Mckenzie told SpaceNews in a recent interview.
“Commercial satcom as well as our own purpose-built Wideband satellites were never designed to provide protection against some of the things we expect our adversaries to do in the near future,” he said.
In response, the Air Force is developing software and satcom ground equipment to boost the protection of WGS networks in the near term, and commercial systems at a later time. First in line for these upgrades are the Navy's aircraft carrier strike groups in the Pacific, Mckenzie said. The Air Force will have this technology available for carrier strike groups in 2022, about 18 months sooner than previously planned.
The central piece of the cyber security upgrade is anti-jam communications software — called the Protected Tactical Waveform (PTW). A ground system, the Protected Tactical Enterprise Service (PTES) will manage the transmission of the waveform over WGS satellites and terminals.
Boeing, which manufactures the WGS satellites, was awarded a seven-year, $383 million contract in November to develop the PTES.
“We are doing agile software development to enable early use of the PTW capability,” said Mckenzie.
The anti-jam software and ground system only will work initially with WGS networks, said Mckenzie. If a commercial provider opted to use the PTW waveform, the ground system could be updated to interoperate with that vendor's network.
Military satcom users will need to upgrade their satellite terminals with new modems to operate the PTW waveform. The Air Force two years ago awarded three contracts — $39 million to Raytheon, $38 million to L3 and $33 million to Viasat — to develop prototype modems. The Army, Navy and Air Force will run separate competitions to decide which modems they will acquire for their specific terminals. For carrier strike groups, the Navy will have to buy PTW-capable modems to upgrade its satellite terminals aboard ships.
In the long term, the plan is to add a new space component — either newly designed spacecraft or military communications payloads hosted on commercial buses. “Our goal is to have some protected tactical satcom prototype payloads on orbit in the fiscal year 2025 time frame,” said Mckenzie.
Whatever new hardware makes up the space segment, it will be compatible with the PTES ground equipment, he said. Mckenzie noted that the Air Force has been criticized for deploying satellites before the ground equipment is available. The PTW and PTES efforts reverse that trend. “We have learned lessons from being out of sync with terminals on the ground,” Mckenzie said. “We've been working for the last several years to develop modem upgrades that can be put into our existing terminals so we have terminals that can use PTW.”
To get fresh thinking on how to develop a secure satcom system, the Air Force Space Enterprise Consortium is funding four design and prototyping projects. These are four areas “where we're trying o reduce risk,” said McKenzie. The consortium was stood up in 2017 and given authorities to kick start projects with far less red tape than traditional Pentagon contracting. Mckenzie said the Air Force is interested in new ideas for constellation architectures, payload hosting concepts, advanced space processing and antenna designs.
McKenzie expects contracts for the development of protected tactical satcom payloads will be awarded in fiscal year 2020, with a goal to start launching new systems into orbit by 2025.
Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and X-Band LLC have entered into cost-sharing agreements with the Air Force — contracts known as Other Transactions Authority — to map out constellation sizes, layouts, design lives, and concepts such as hosting of military payloads as a commercial service.
Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and SSL have signed OTA agreements to develop phased arrays and array fed reflectors antennas.
BAE Systems, L3 and SEAKR Engineering received OTA deals to investigate requirements for secure satcom applications such as geo-location, waveform processing, and anti-jam. Boeing and Southwest Research Institute are studying hosting concepts, such as identifying interface commonalities between commercial and military bus providers and recommends ways to simplify the integration.
Tom Becht, military satcom director at the Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center, said the protected tactical satcom effort has been underway for more than eight years and now is being accelerated as the Air Force seeks to respond to military commanders' needs in a more timely fashion. “The demand for protected satcom has significantly increased,” Becht said in an interview.
After the PTW, PTES and the new space segment are deployed, the next step will be to modernize the military's nuclear-hardened strategic satcom system, the Advanced Extremely High Frequency constellation. Most of the users of the AEHF system are tactical operators and the Pentagon eventually wants to have a dedicated strategic satcom constellation for nuclear command and control. “Tactical users will transition to the Protected Tactical Satcom system,” said Becht.
That transition could take decades, he said. “The aggregated [tactical and strategic] AEHF will be around until the mid 2030s or a bit longer.”
27 décembre 2022 | International, Aérospatial
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11 décembre 2020 | International, Terrestre
By Endre Lunde, December, 9 2020 Nammo and the Finnish Defense Forces (FDF) signed a new long-term strategic partnership agreement today during a brief ceremony at the Finnish Defense Command in Helsinki. The agreement is a continuation of a previous security of supply agreement between the two parties signed in 2014, and comes after the Finnish Minister of Defense approved the new agreement on 20 November “This agreement confirms the close relationship between Nammo and the Finnish government, which has existed since the formation of Nammo in 1998, and before that since our current Finnish factories were founded in the 1920s. We are as committed to Finnish safety and security as we have ever been, and this new agreement will allow us to take on an even greater role and build an even closer partnership with the Finnish Defense Forces,” said Morten Brandtzæg, President and CEO of the Nammo Group. Raimo Helasmäki, Managing Director of Nammo Lapua Oy, Nammo's Finnish subsidiary, is very satisfied with the agreement being signed. “This Strategic Partnership Agreement strengthens and supports Nammo Lapua Oy's position as a major player in domestic security of supply,” Helasmäki said. The Strategic Partnership is a multi-year agreement, and will remain be in force until further notice. The total value is expected to be about EUR 20 million per year. Nammo's history in Finland dates back to the years immediately following its independence, when what is today Nammo Lapua, Nammo Vihtavuori and Nammo Sastamala were founded to produce much-needed munitions for its armed forces. The new agreement continues this long-standing history, and covers every aspect of ammunition, explosives and propellants manufacturing in Finland, thereby ensuring a continued domestic security of supply for the Finnish Armed Forces. Finnish Defense Forces Deputy Chief of Staff for Logistics and Armaments, Lieutenant General Timo Kakkola believes the agreement will strengthen the approach and ways of working that has been developed over the past six years by Nammo and the FDF. At the same time, it represents an important step further where Nammo becomes a true strategic partner for the FDF, helping to manage the full supply chain for ammunition, an essential part of Finnish national readiness. “Our domestic ammunition and propellants industry still has a significant part to play in our security of supply, and this agreement allows us to continue its development through a long-term partnership with Nammo,” said General Kakkola. ABOUT THE AUTHOR ENDRE LUNDE, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, COMMUNICATIONS EMAIL endre.lunde@nammo.com TEL +4790853270 View source version on NAMMO: https://www.nammo.com/story/nammo-signs-strategic-partnership-agreement-with-the-finnish-defense-forces/
23 décembre 2024 | International, C4ISR, Sécurité
AI-driven attacks, zero-day flaws, and supply chain risks shape 2025 trends, demanding proactive defenses.