[Satellite News 10-16-08] Commercial satellite operators used the Satcon 2008 conference as a forum to push and develop military partnerships to provide communications services to combat forces and military command centers. Intelsat has been a frequently mentioned player in this field, not only from industry analysts, but from military officials who have expressed interest in the operator’s capabilities.
    Intelsat President Kay Sears sat down with Satellite News News Editor Jeffrey Hill to discuss two elements of the military and commercial satellite partnership that she feels are the most important – saving lives and raising troop morale.

Satellite News: You mentioned on your panel that a military partnership with commercial satellite operators would raise troop morale, could you elaborate on how?

Sears: Like subscribers and consumers back in the United States, our troops serving overseas demand broadband Internet services. It is the lifeline that connects the troops with their families. The people flying the planes and fighting on the front lines are also just as Internet-savvy as consumers back home. They use video services over the Internet to talk to their wives and husbands in addition to just sending e-mail. They also download movies and music. They are human beings who want to connect to their culture. When you have these services available, it raises troop morale and becomes crucial to establishing an effective fighting force.
    The breakthrough is that the military is now starting to realize how important this connection is and is starting to come to commercial operators like Intelsat to establish those connections and provide the bandwidth that is very much in demand. Not only for troop morale, but for saving the lives of the troops with more unmanned aerial vehicles being used. This realization started with the recent troop surge in the Middle East, starting from Desert Storm on to the recent troop surge in Iraq.

Satellite News: With so many people in the satellite industry talking about how limited bandwidth and capacity is, how do you have the capacity required to provide these services?

Sears: The military has filled up the entire capacity on their systems. In the beginning of our relationship, we just provided some of the overflow to their older systems. Now because of the dramatic increase of troops in the Middle East, we are their primary network.
    They were lucky that we even had the capacity. Nobody planned to have excess capacity on the systems to the tune of a couple of gigabits, which is the demand they are pushing on the commercial satellites right now.

Satellite News: Will the demand still be there when or if U.S. troops are pulled out of Iraq?

Sears: If there is a pull out of Iraq, it is clear that we will be deploying more troops to Afghanistan, so the demand will continue. We will always have troops in certain arenas like the Middle East. We will also have troops at our base in Germany. The U.S. Navy has a global mission with a steady demand for communication services. Both presidential candidates have also talked about increasing and rebuilding our military. Bottom line is, the demand continues to be there and there are no signs of that demand letting up any time soon.
    Another point I’d like to make is that, on the commercial end of it, we are establishing a customer base. When the troops come home, they will remember that those broadband services were what kept them connected to their families and they will be up to date on the technology available to consumers. Remember, our troops connect to the Internet now up to several times a day and those connection opportunities will only increase as these services are used for battlefield intelligence, for example, from a laptop being used by the driver of a humvee.

Satellite News: What is Intelsat doing to ease the fears of military officials who worry about the security of your network?

Sears: Intelsat is one of the leaders in the commercial operator industry when it comes to security. We have launched our satellites with TTNC encryption – that is a standard policy for Intelsat. What we do is when government users procure capacity on our satellites, we turn that encryption system on. We have been doing that for the last year and that adds the security to meet the government requirements. We have also completed a cyber security review of not only our operation centers but all of our IT systems to ensure that we are not subject to a hostile takeover of our systems. The government helps us to understand what those threats really are.
    We also have customizable security solutions that have been a major part of the discussion with the Department of Defense. We ask them ‘what kind of security do you want to see on our satellites?’ We want the military to understand that these are the security features that we are willing to put on at no cost to our customers because it is the smart thing to do. If they want us to have some of the features that they have on military satellite communications and go beyond what we have now, that would require an investment and commitment from the government.