The U.S. Air Force Special Operations Command’s (AFSOC) 1st Special Operations Contracting Squadron is nearing the end of a year-long operational evaluation of the military effectiveness of SpaceX‘s Starlink low Earth orbit (LEO) communications satellites, according to Air Force Life Cycle Management Center’s (AFLCMC) program executive office for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) and special operations platforms.
The 1st Special Operations Contracting Squadron at Hurlburt Field, Fla., provides contracting support for the 1st Special Operations Wing, which includes a number of AFSOC aircraft, including Lockheed Martin [LMT] MC-130J Commando IIs, AC-130J Ghost Rider gunships, and CV-22 tiltrotors by Bell [TXT] and Boeing [BA].
In August last year, the 1st Special Operations Contracting Squadron said in a business notice that it planned a “limited rollout of” Starlink to conduct the 12-month operational evaluation with five Starlink high performance ground kits and Starlink satellites’ global access service (Defense Daily, Aug. 8, 2022).
Last year’s business notice, which redacted the locations and specific units and platforms that are to test Starlink, said that “Starlink is the only LEO constellation communications company that currently provides this commercial satellite solution with services to Europe and Africa” and that, while Starlink currently has “more than 1,350 satellites,” the LEO networks of its competitors, such as Amazon, Inc. [AMZN]’s Kuiper Systems; OneWeb; and Telesat Corp. [TSAT], “are still in their infancy” and are not able to serve Europe and Africa.
“The 12-month [AFSOC] operational evaluation of Starlink per the sole source justification is almost complete,” AFLCMC wrote in an Aug. 28 email reply to questions. “However, it was not used for an operational evaluation by MC-130Js, AC-130Js, CV-22s, or any aircraft. For AC-130J, integration/install for Starlink was started in November, 2021 and a flight test was completed December, 2022. Further requirements are still being determined.”
Starlink LEO, which is to provide AFSOC operational testers with download rates of up to 500 megabits per second and upload rates of up to 50 megabits per second, “builds in circuit resiliency through Software Defined Wide Area networking (SDWANS) for one of the units allowing for multiple transport sources,” the business notice in August last year said.
DoD and the contractors that support it appear to be taking heed of commercial data transfer rates and shifting from kilobits per second rates to hundreds of megabits per second to provide data more rapidly to military forces (Defense Daily, Sept. 24, 2020).
The Air Force Research Laboratory’s (AFRL) Defense Experimentation Using Commercial Space Internet (DEUCSI) program–also known as “Global Lightning”–has sought to use commercial space internet networks for Air Force communications.
“AFRL has discovered that in a contested environment, LEO constellations are much more resilient to signal jamming and also provide the low latency required to support tactical missions,” per last year’s AFSOC business notice.
In addition, the Air Force is examining Starlink and other potential improvements for the Boeing E-7A Wedgetail, which is to replace at least 15 of the venerable E-3 Airborne Warning and Control System (AWACS) planes for airborne moving target indication (Defense Daily, July 31).
Improvements upon the E-7A’s Northrop Grumman [NOC] Multi-role Electronically Scanned Array (MESA) radar would increase range and allow the radar to detect small radar cross section targets.
“For comms, AWACS right now uses Iridium for bandwidth,” Tom Ramsey, AFLCMC’s senior materiel leader for AWACS and the E-7A, told reporters last month during a question and answer session during AFLCMC’s annual industry days conference. “We’re looking to get increased bandwidth out of Starlink, and can we use more secure comms in some areas.”
The Pentagon has said that it came to an agreement with SpaceX in June to fund the company’s continued provision of Starlink communications to Ukrainian forces, but DoD and the company have not disclosed the terms nor the dollar amount of the deal.