All Domain, Global, Space
SES’s O3b mPower satellite constellation. (Graphic: SES)
WASHINGTON — Luxembourg’s parliament has approved a plan to create a military satellite communications network to be shared with its NATO allies, including the United States, by acquiring capacity from SES’s O3b mPower constellation under a deal worth €195 million ($213 million) over the next decade, the company announced today.
The plan is designed not just to improve Luxembourg’s military space capabilities, but also specifically to deepen defense cooperation with the United States by “jointly exploiting” the new SES satellites, explains a Feb. 23 fact sheet [PDF, in French] from the Luxembourg Defense Directorate, which is part of the Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs.
The US Space Force’s fiscal 2024 budget includes $59 million to acquire SATCOM service from the O3b mPower constellation that eventually will comprise 11 satellites in medium Earth orbit (MEO). The acquisition would be made through NATO’s Global Commercially Contracted Satellite Communications (GCC SATCOM) support partnership established by the US and Luxembourg last year. While SES is based in Luxembourg, the SATCOM services to the Space Force will be provided by the firm’s US arm, SES Space and Defense.
The Space Force in November 2020 successfully tested the Protected Tactical Waveform (PTW) over SES’s first-generation O3b constellation, the service said in a 2021 press release. “PTW, a United States Government-owned, frequency-agnostic waveform capable of providing flexible, adaptive, anti-jam communications” will be used by the service’s planned Protected Anti-jam Tactical SATCOM (PATS) family of programs and is designed to provide “reliable, robust and secure” SATCOM to DoD and international allies, the release said.
SES now has four O3b mPower birds on orbit, and plans to launch another two this summer, a spokesperson for the company told Breaking Defense today. The O3b mPower satellites are built by Boeing, and sport higher throughput than SES’s first generation O3b birds, and the capability to link to aircraft, ships and/or ground vehicles on the move to transmit intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities, according to officials from both companies.
While Luxembourg is tiny, it is punching beyond its weight in space in large part because of a government-backed investment and tax-break scheme launched in 2017. The government also intends to up its game in military space, having laid out a “Defence Space Strategy” last year [PDF] that includes plans to “consolidate current space capacities, increase their resilience and develop new systems” for SATCOM, electro-optical Earth observation, space situational awareness and positioning, timing and navigation.
The strategy also commits the country to supporting “freedom of action in and from space” via contributing to deterrence efforts in cooperation with international partners and supporting norms of behavior for military space activities.
Further, Luxembourg has a history of military space cooperation with the United States, as one of nine partner countries using the Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) constellation based in geosynchronous orbit (GEO). The other partners are: Australia, Canada, Denmark, Belgium, the Netherlands, New Zealand, the Czech Republic and Norway.
Topics
Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellites, All Domain Operations, Europe, Luxembourg, Multi-Domain Operations, NATO, O3b, O3b mPower, Protected Tactical SATCOM (PTS), Protected Tactical Waveform, satellite communications, ses, SES Space and Defense, Space Force, Wideband Global Satcom
Source link : https://breakingdefense.com/2023/06/luxembourg-greenlights-new-military-satcom-network-using-ses-satellites/?amp=1
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Publish date : 2023-06-15 07:00:00
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