For decades, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) has put up with an increasingly fragmented and dysfunctional satellite communications (SATCOM) acquisition model.
Multiple agencies are responsible for disparate parts of the capability, turning to the commercial satellite industry largely on an ad hoc basis.
In an article just published in SpaceNews titled ‘U.S. forces need unified satcom, not status quo’, Rebecca Cowen-Hirsch, Inmarsat U.S. Government SVP Government Strategy and Policy, presents an in-depth summary of the history of SATCOM procurement.
The article examines how the continuing ‘status quo’ approach has resulted in programme delays, stove-pipe models and asynchronous terminal and ground segment acquisitions.
With the current state of asymmetrical and unpredictable global engagement, Rebecca discusses why the modern serviceman or woman deserves better to access mobile, data-intensive applications anytime, anywhere.
Support is increasing for SATCOM as a service, which would integrate complex and highly capable solutions within an end-to-end managed services architecture to achieve optimal capability, capacity, reliability, flexibility and resiliency.
To find out more about these developments, read her full SpaceNews article here: www.spacenews.com
