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Satellite
Security and Performance in an Era of Dual Use
By
Dr. Joseph N. Pelton
Director, Space and Advanced Communications Research
Institute (SACRI)
The George Washington University
Introduction
Since
the mid-1990s the U.S. Government and military forces
have placed more and more reliance on commercial satellite
systems for military communications of a non-tactical
nature. Requirements such as the U.S. Armed Forces
Radio and Television require a great deal of bandwidth
but do not require any special security protection.
Further there are many other forms of communications
involving national security or defense systems where
a varying degree of security is required. Many of
these applications do not require a very high level
of “top secret” protection since these
communications do involve tactical, strategic or highly
classified messages. For instance, communications
services that allow overseas forces to talk to their
family and friends can be provided with only a minimum
of digital encryption protection.
In the
post 9/11 environment there are also now growing requirements
for secure messaging involving homeland security.
These communications typically do require highly protected
fiber or military satellite facilities with 132 bit
digital encryption, but still require a reasonably
high level of security. In some cases these services
can be made available via commercial satellite systems.
Beyond the American-based military, governmental and
security satellite requirements there are many other
military, security, police, fire and peace-keeping
telecommunications requirements around the world that
can and will also be met on commercial satellite systems.
Such requirements today represent a very high percent
of commercial satellite system growth.
Back
in 1997, a Futron study as shown as Figure 1 below
projected that new commercial traffic to support commercial
business enterprise networks, scientific networks
and entertainment would dominate growth while government
and military service requirements would represent
very limited growth. The cross over did occur in the
1ate 1990s. Since then commercial market growth on
satellites has stagnated while military and related
security growth has continued to be quite strong and
is significantly fueled by “dual use”
of commercial satellite systems.
Figure
1
Source:
Futron Corporation, Satellite Industry Statistics
Survey 1987 (conducted for Satellite Industry Association
by Futron Corporation), with thanks to Aerospace America's
annual series of reports on national expenditures
on space activities.
The result
has been that governmental and military services requirements
for satellites continue to represent a very substantial
portion of all commercial satellite services and satellite
systems have had to adapt to this situation in terms
of capacity availability, flexibility of geographic
capability, and certain types of encryption and security
requirements. Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) services
that have represented a substantial share of satellite
system growth in the past three years have been deployed
to meet military requirements.
Overall
non-strategic communications requirements for governmental
operations, research, security and military systems
now form the largest single user group on commercial
satellite systems. Current rapid growth patterns suggest
this will be even truer tomorrow. This demand is sufficiently
strong that the new X-TAR commercial venture, involving
U.S. and Spanish interests, now plans to build and
launch at least two satellites to operate in the X-band
that will carry exclusive military communications
to support U.S. and European needs. The bulk of the
$18.7 billion appropriated for the US Defense Department
Transformational Communications Program will apparently
be applied to dual use applications, despite the $8.7
billion earmarked for Milstar.
This
concept of "dual use" is certainly not new.
The Intelsat system has been carrying “non-tactic
military traffic for the U.S. Armed Forces Radio and
Television network to U.S. military basis for over
thirty years. What is new is that the volume of traffic
is growing exponentially and the type of requirements
is expanding. These burgeoning requirements impact
fixed satellite systems, mobile satellite systems,
broadcast satellite systems, store and forward satellite
systems, space navigation systems, radio determination
satellite systems. |
