Thursday, April 10, 2003
The Defense Department and National Reconnaissance Office provided the first detailed look Tuesday (March 8) at the Transformational Communications Architecture (TCA), a next-generation space-communications infrastructure to be shared by U.S. intelligence, defense and space agencies.
Rear Adm. Rand Fisher, director of naval space technology programs and head of the Transformational Communications Office within NRO, said during this week's National Space Symposium that the new multi-service architecture shares many traits with the public Internet. These include a shift from circuit to packet communications and severe bandwidth bottlenecks in the last mile to the user.
Two new satellite systems will play a key role in the new architecture. TSATs, or Transformational Satellites, will be protected, Extremely High Frequency (EHF) communication satellites operating in both Ka and X bands. They may also have the capability to communicate with the Mobile User Objective System, or MUOS broadband satellite.
A second new system, the Advanced Polar Satellite, is a special high-speed system handling IP and circuit-switched data, with an RF cross-link to the Advanced EHF satellite now under development. The Pentagon plans to spend at least $9.6 billion on TCA development, with $6.3 billion alone going to TSAT and APS satellites.
U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld opened the TCA Office last October. Howell Estes, former U.S. Space Command head, said the rationale for combining NRO and NASA resources was to "close the last mile to the tactical war-fighter, by extending bandwidth to forces on the move."
By: DocMemory
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