Reliant on Starlink, Army eager for more SATCOM constellation options

The Army is leaning heavily on SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network for advanced command and control, but service officials say they want to keep their options open as new commercial megaconstellations materialize.

Mark Kitz, the Army’s program executive officer for tactical command, control and communications, said Wednesday that the importance of proliferated low Earth orbit satellite networks was on display at the service’s most recent Project Convergence Capstone event, where the Army experiments with multi-domain connectivity concepts.

“I don’t think you could take 10 steps without tripping over a Starshield terminal,” Kitz said at AFCEA’s TechNet conference in Augusta, Georgia. “I would say the Army is very committed to pLEO and Starshield.”

Starshield is SpaceX’s military business unit, which provides access to the company’s Starlink constellation, a fleet of more than 6,000 satellites in LEO, about 1,200 miles above Earth’s surface. The growing network of spacecraft provides internet service for private consumers as well as militaries around the world.

The company has expanded its military space footprint in recent years, providing launch services through its Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets and receiving its first military satellite production contract in 2021 from the Space Development Agency.

The Ukrainian military has relied heavily on Starlink in its war with Russia, and last year the U.S. Space Force awarded the company a contract for the satellite service. Starshield is also building a classified constellation of hundreds of spy satellites for the National Reconnaissance Office, Reuters reported earlier this year.

While Starlink is the dominant player providing space-based communications services, several other companies have plans to join them. Amazon is designing a 3,000-satellite network called Project Kuiper, with its first operational spacecraft slated to launch late this year. U.K.-based OneWeb and Luxembourg’s Intelsat are also developing large SATCOM constellations with slightly different market focuses than SpaceX.

Speaking with Kitz at TechNet, Director of the Army’s Network Cross-Functional Team Maj. Gen. Patrick Ellis said that as these constellations come online, the Army wants to ensure its units have access to multiple connectivity options.

“What we’re really looking for is that diversification of transport, and that is one of the tools we’re looking to give commanders,” Ellis said.

One way the Army is looking to give commanders access to more satellite services is through its Next-Generation Tactical Terminal. The program is designing a capability to leverage constellations based in multiple orbits and frequency bands through a single terminal by building an agnostic radio frequency receiver.

“We want to get out of bringing a new antenna every time we want to change providers,” Kitz said. “If a unit deploys and they want to leverage a Ka-band Kuiper, they have that RF front end. If they want to be leveraging Starshield, we swap modems and we go.”