DOD’s bandwidth appetite is huge and growing. By some estimates, the current demand for wideband capacity is more than double DOD’s ability to meet it—a gap that will likely grow to 18 Gbps over the next decade. Let’s face it: DOD can’t build and launch satellites fast enough to meet its need to move information to low command levels. There’s only one place we can turn to meet this shortfall: commercial SATCOM.

Without a solid relationship with industry partners, we simply can’t meet the needs of deployed warfighters. This type of relationship isn’t new. Rather than build our own tanker aircraft, it may be more cost-effective to simply purchase a Boeing DC-10 and modify it.

“There are areas of military operations where industry can’t meet our needs.”

Similarly, in communications, using business best practices and buying commercial off-the-shelf equipment is supplanting the procurement of custom mil-std and mil-spec gear.

But there are areas of military operations where industry can’t meet our needs, and commercial best practices are simply inadequate. DOD is unique and operates differently from other consumers of commercial SATCOM. Most broadcast customers—HBO, for example—want to set up an antenna, point it at a satellite and leave it there for 15 years.

DOD wants to take that same antenna, bolt it to a humvee, then drive across the desert—without any decrease in capability—while changing satellites or frequencies on a moment’s notice.

What’s more, although we consume a great deal of capacity in the Middle East today, tomorrow we may need to shift that capacity in the Pacific, Africa or elsewhere. The SATCOM industry has few other customers who operate in such a dynamic, unpredictable and rapidly changing environment.

Despite the hurdles, DOD’s relationship with its SATCOM partners has come a long way, especially in recent years. Industry is developing a mature understanding of how Defense uses communications to support operations. Likewise, DOD is learning how to better articulate requirements in cooperation with an industry that, in the past, largely focused on lucrative customers such as direct broadcast TV and telecommunications carriers. Our acquisition mechanisms are adapting from simple lowest-bidder contracts to complex deals that leverage DOD’s tremendous buying power.

We cannot succeed without industry. Fortunately, it now keenly focuses on meeting DOD’s needs as its largest single customer.

Defense will always need to rely on military SATCOM for certain needs, but we will also rely on commercial SATCOM.

Successful communications for warfighting must combine military and commercial SATCOM into a seamless architecture. Only through this relationship and a collaborative architecture, can we expect to meet the needs of DOD's fighting forces around the world.

Air Force Maj. Michael W. Moyles is the Strategic Command’s commercial SATCOM operational manager.

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