Air Force applies brakes to satellite program

Nextgov reports that the ambitious Transformational Communications Satellite (TSAT) system, a $16 billion program that would allow surveillance satellites to move masses of data to troops in and near battle, is in a holding pattern.

The program is designed to make available over broadband masses of intelligence and surveillance data from its sources -- satellite and otherwise -- and move it to fighters in the field. It's a crucial part of the comprehensive Future Combat Systems program developed by the Army to modernize its capabilities. The Air Force's space program has undertaken the TSAT project, but other branches of the Armed Forces would have access to its capabilities.

It has been feared for some time that both TSAT and the larger modernization program were committing to more than could be delivered; even at $16 billion (and $160 for the larger project), the projects looked underfunded to Congressional investigators.

According to the report, Gary Payton, undersecretary of the Air Force for space programs, says that the program's not dead. For now, though, the Ka-band satellites to be used in the program will lack certain wanted capabilities, such as sat-to-sat communications and air-to-ground Ka-band satellite transponders. (Ka-band transmissions require much higher power than those in the usual K-band spectrum area and can target smaller receivers. They do, on the other hand, seem to have some problems making their connections when it's raining.)

Those functions will apparently be added later, once the system's fully funded again, and the first of the Ka-less TSAT satellites will now go up in 2019. Meanwhile -- since the need for high-speed data access isn't going to wait 'til 2019 -- the Wideband Global SATCOM system, which now has six satellites aloft, will take up the slack. Those six satellites, which are shared with Australia's defense forces (since they paid for a bird), can move data at speed between 2.4 and 3.6 gigabits per second. TSAT, in comparison, is expected to reach speeds of 5Gbps.