Hughes awarded DoD contract for SATCOM communications architecture

Hughes Network Systems, LLC of Germantown, MD announced on July 24 that it has been awarded a Wideband Communications Architecture Study (WCAS) contract to support the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) plan for resilient, cost-effective satellite communications (SATCOM) capabilities. Under the contract, Hughes will investigate a wide-ranging commercial perspective on how different satellite transports can interoperate for wideband government applications.

Hughes will help to create a secure and affordable WCA that can facilitate varied and redundant space and ground transports, delivering a design analysis of wide-beam, spot-beam, and on-board processing satellites, including GEO/LEO and airborne platforms. An overall goal is to expand the flexibility and interoperability of U.S. government satellite communications capabilities, allowing DoD’s various applications to operate over its own satellite network as well as leveraging commercial satellites, gateways, waveforms, and terminals to increase mission assurance.

“This new contract reinforces our growing leadership in efficient defense and
intelligence-related high-throughput satellite, ground infrastructure, and automation technologies,” said Rick Lober, vice president and general manager of Hughes Defense and Intelligence Systems Division. “Hughes looks forward to supporting the DoD in helping define innovative and interoperable satellite system architectures for flexible and robust network management for contested environments.”

Hughes is proposing to leverage a multi-modem adaptor to enable multiple service providers to contribute towards a resilient SATCOM service that will also automate provisioning and improve network operational efficiency.

Source: Hughes