A Satellite Earth station. Photo: Kratos

Kratos Defense and Security Solutions received a $7.5 million award to enhance the U.S. Enterprise Management and Control (EM&C) architecture with a Satellite Situational Awareness (SSA), Common Operating Picture (SA-COP). In addition, Kratos will introduce new orchestration capabilities that automate the configuration of terminals and supporting networks and scale this capability to support a worldwide network of satellite gateways, terminals, and terrestrial infrastructure.

The SA-COP and orchestration capabilities are a continuation of Kratos’ work supporting EM&C, a strategic program designed to enable roaming among heterogeneous milsatcom and commercial satcom networks and optimize wideband satellite communications. The new award expands on functions previously developed under Pilot I and II programs.

“EM&C provides communication resiliency and reduces costs by providing timely insight into network status and usage. The SA-COP reuses software from the prototype EM&C and existing operational sensors and software, protecting previous investments. Orchestration capabilities will automatically configure and activate services and collect situational awareness, providing quick restoration of communications for deployed personnel. What’s more, it reduces training requirements for operators allowing them to receive alerts and automated analysis in one place, while giving opportunity to further assess underlying systems when needed,” said Matt Langenbahn, Kratos Vice President of Radio Frequency (RF) Sensing Systems.