Photo: SES

Kratos Defense & Security Solutions and SES demonstrated a virtualized satcom ground system for the U.S. Army Futures Command, over the SES O3b satellite network, the companies announced April 17. 

The project was funded through the Network Cross-Functional Team (N-CFT) established by the Army Futures Command. The demonstration for the U.S. Army’s Combat Capabilities Development Command used a remote terminal in Port St. Lucie, Florida, and a gateway in Lima, Peru. The gateway was connected to a software-defined Kratos OpenSpace vStar hub system located in Virginia. It was orchestrated and conducted over SES’s O3b Medium-Earth Orbit (MEO) satellite network. 

Kratos and SES said it showed a flexible network architecture with simultaneous communication pathways for resilient satcom. The companies demonstrated seamless operation supporting satellites in MEO on a “make-before-break” mode, transferring coverage between satellites over SES’s O3b MEO satellite network.

“SES’s software reconfigurable approach will future-proof ground systems and simplify the interoperability of multi-constellation, multi-orbit, multi-platform satellite services as well as standards-based integration with terrestrial networks,” said Saba Wehbe, senior vice president of Service Engineering and Delivery of SES. 

Kratos recently performed a similar demonstration using OpenSpace with Telesat Government Solutions and Cobham Satcom for the U.S. Army’s Program Executive Office Command, Control, Communications-Tactical (PEO C3T).

“OpenSpace is the first to leverage containers to orchestrate the transfer of communication sessions in a standards-based, open, COTS platform environment. Using a containerized architecture for this make-before-break handover is a significant advancement in satcom technology,” said Chris Badgett, vice president of technology for Kratos Space.