Mil-Tech

Set up and maintain a robust satellite hub at the Qatar base

Sgt. Jeffrey Yauch, from Plover, Wis., adheres to the old Army conviction: leave it better than you found it. During a one-year deployment, the 1st Cavalry Division soldier wrote detailed technical standard operation procedures for tactical satellite hubs employing the military’s latest communications technology.

Yauch’s painstaking labors led to an unprecedented 99-percent satellite reliability rate, according to signal reports at Camp As Sayliyah, Qatar. Tactical environment uptimes typically range between 90 and 95 percent, according to Chief Warrant Officer Scott Gray, 1st Cavalry Division Special Troops Battalion network technician chief.

“Our team set a new standard for maintaining a tactical satellite hub,” said Gray, who then commended the entire unit for supporting communication requirements for over 230,000 combat patrols in Iraq this year.

The 1st Cavalry Division, a rapidly deployable armored division based at Fort Hood, Texas, assumed duties as the Multi-National Division – Baghdad headquarters in January. While the main body moved into Iraq, Yauch and 18 other Soldiers formed a tactical satellite hub at Camp As Sayliyah, Qatar, located on the eastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula.

The team of Soldiers inherited a critical mission: set up and maintain a robust satellite hub at the Qatar base. Warfighters throughout Iraq would depend on their signal integrity for a variety of audiovisual services, such as telecommunications, video teleconferences and network access. Unfortunately, specific instructions about fielding the Army’s most recent equipment didn’t exist. Yauch resolved to fix that discrepancy, as the Soldiers went to work.

The tactical satellite document has been disseminated throughout Iraq and Afghanistan.

France plans to launch a military spy satellite tomorrow

The satellite, Helios 2B is slated to blast off on a European Ariane rocket at 1:26 pm (1626 GMT) tomorrow from the European Space Agency launch site in French Guiana.

The defence ministry said, as Paris boosts spending on its independent surveillance from space despite closer military co-operation with the United States. This will be the first such launch under President Nicolas Sarkozy who brought France back into NATO’s military command earlier this year, following a 40-year partial rift with the military alliance. While cooperating more closely with the United States on military planning, France sees independent access to space intelligence as a strategic priority.

“In an international context marked by uncertainty, France must be able to understand the strategic environment in which it is evolving and to anticipate threats,” the defence ministry said in a briefing document.

The satellite would help in preparing missions and assessing threats, as well as drawing up maps of uncharted zones in Afghanistan, Iraq, Chad and the neighbouring Sudanese region of Darfur.

Manufactured by the space division of Airbus parent EADS, Helios 2B is the second of France’s second generation of spy satellites. Its predecessor was launched in 2004.

It was initially planned as a pan-European satellite series to counter US space intelligence domination during the Cold War. However, France’s European partners have been less willing to participate financially in the Helios 2 programme.

The Air Force communications satellites called Widefield Global SATCOM launched!

The Delta 4 rocket launched the third in a series of advanced Air Force communications satellites called Widefield Global SATCOM spacecraft. The 13,000-pound satellite will serve U.S. and allied troops on missions around the world, including those now fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The satellite provides a giant leap in communications bandwidth and technology and will replace the aging Defense Satellite Communication System.

WGS satellites are designed to provide high-capacity communications to our nation’s military forces. They will augment and eventually replace the aging Defense Satellite Communication System, which has been the Department of Defense’s backbone for satellite communications over the past two decades. The satellite provides a giant leap in communications bandwidth and technology. The satellites supply communications such as maps and data to soldiers on the battlefield, relay video from unmanned aerial reconnaissance drones, route voice calls and data messaging, and even offer quality-of-life considerations like television broadcasts and email delivery to the troops.

The satellite will be maneuvered into a circular geostationary orbit 22,300 miles above the planet where it can match the Earth’s rotation and appear parked over one area of the globe. On-orbit testing is scheduled to last a few months, enabling the craft to begin full use next April.

The WGS spacecraft are constructed around Boeing’s powerhouse 702-model design used by commercial satellite operators. But within the WGS craft are Ka- and X-band military communications packages.

The WGS craft offer X-band communications, like the venerable DSCS satellites, to connect with military users anywhere within the field of view from orbit.