Satellite News: How has the relationship between the Pentagon and the satellite industry evolved?

Satellite News: How has the military’s demand on commercial services changed?

Moyles: Our needs have always been increasing and will continue to increase. Smart weapons, the U.S. Army’s future combat system, the airborne ISR piece — all of these things are massive data hogs. On top of that, we also have morale, welfare and recreation usage by troops. These include phone calls back home to their families through videoconferencing. You could make an argument that those types of communication services, which boosts troop morale, are just as important and essential as intelligence, imagery, battlefield awareness or any other military application. We provide some of that with our own military satellites, but some of that is provided by the commercial industry.
    Overall, we have never been able to meet our capacity requirements. We are not meeting them today and I do not expect we will meet them anytime soon. The commercial satellites provide much more capacity than the military ever could by itself. The Department of Defense tends to operate in areas that do not have a robust terrestrial infrastructure. The infrastructure either doesn’t exist, like in the mountains of Tora Bora in Afghanistan, or has been destroyed by natural disasters like the Asian tsunami of 2005, or it has been destroyed by war, like in Iraq. Therefore, our need for satellite communications is unique among the industry’s customers and as the number of conflicts increase and our participation escalates and the amount of information we use increases, our capacity requirements go through the roof.

Satellite News: Does the National Space Policy place restrictions on these types of partnerships?

Moyles: The National Space Policy does not restrict the Department of Defense’s use of commercial satellites at all. In fact, it’s just the opposite. The national space policy could be seen as the catalyst to the change in the way the Department of Defense works with the commercial industry. The national space policy published by President Bush in August 2006 requires the Department of Defense to consider the commercial industry first when their services are available and consistent with national security needs. If they can’t meet our needs, then the national space policy indicates that we should modify commercial services to meet our needs. We are told to seek out our own solutions only when the commercial industry cannot meet our needs and cannot be modified.
    The challenges lie in the implementation of this policy because there is a caveat — if there is any suspicion or any fear that commercial services are not as protected or secure as our own satellites, then the policy provides us with a justification to use only our own services and there have been many, many instances where there was enough concern. Some of this concern has been raised in the last few years with the fact that there are no longer any U.S.-owned commercial satellite providers. The merger of Intelsat and PanAmSat as well as SES Americom and New Skies have created this kind of environment. However, there are no commercial satellite providers owned by hostile countries. At the same time, there is a feeling in the Department of Defense that having U.S. control or having U.S.-based assets is almost a given. It’s a tough sell.

Satellite News: How can the commercial industry address concerns from the military over the protection of communications infrastructure?

Moyles: The impression that commercial satcom is not protected is wrong, and the Department of Defense needs to do a little more homework over the concept of protection. I think that the word protection has been misused to a large degree. If by protected we mean hardened against a nuclear attack, then of course, there are no commercial satellites that can provide those types of services, only military. But if by protection you mean encryption or anti-jamming, there are commercial satellites that are capable of providing those features. They may not be able to mitigate the jamming but they will be able to locate where the jamming is coming from and either terminate it or nullify it. In most cases military satellites are subject to the exact same basic threats as commercial satellites. The mitigation measures are the same.

Satellite News: How does the partnership with the commercial industry reduce risk?

Moyles: You could draw an easy parallel to how investors should handle the current economic crisis in that one of the best ways to reduce risk is to diversify your portfolio. If the Department of Defense can diversify its communications portfolio where some of our communications is terrestrial, some by military satellite and some by a variety of commercial satellite providers, we reduce risk. If we put all of our eggs in one basket, so to speak, we create incentive — a huge target for someone with hostile intent to create a significant event that puts our entire communications network at risk.
    By diversifying you also reduce the impact of an attack. If you have only four satellites providing your military communications and one of those satellites is attacked, 25 percent of your communications is compromised, which is huge. But if you have the same communication over a dozen or so satellites plus six different service providers plus a terrestrial back-up, the impact is reduced therefore risk is reduced because there are 100 different ways that communication network could operate.

Satellite News: Will the presidential administration change affect commercial and military partnerships?

Moyles: President-elect Obama and Vice President-elect Biden released a memo clearly stating that space is a priority and that is about as detailed as he got. How these policies will be implemented is anyone’s guess. I hope it will not have a negative impact on the relationship between the Department of Defense and the industry.

Join fellow colleagues to hear Major Michael Moyles speak in Commercial Military SatCom 2009: Recession-Proof? at SATELLITE 2009: Solutions Start Here, March 24 – 27, 2009 in Washington D.C.