The U.S.-led war on terrorism is fueling momentum behind efforts to develop new military space capabilities in areas such as communications and ground and space surveillance, according to senior U.S. Air Force officials.
At the same time, however, funding and technical constraints have clouded the future of other initiatives, including proposals to bolster the Air Force’s two main rocket programs and begin fielding a next-generation satellite navigation system by 2011, one service official said.
The lessons so far from the military campaign in Afghanistan have helped secure funds for work on a next-generation satellite communications architecture that uses laser-optics technology as well as radio frequency to transmit and receive data, according to Peter B. Teets, undersecretary of the Air Force.
Unmanned aerial vehicles have proven themselves in Afghanistan, and they require tremendous amounts of bandwidth to transmit imagery and other data to troops and commanders, Teets told reporters at a Sept. 5 breakfast here. The likelihood that aerial drones will be used increasingly in future conflicts has given a sense of urgency to fielding a higher-capacity satellite communications system, he said.
The proposed Transformational Communications Architecture, by using laser technology, has the potential to provide 10 times the communications bandwidth as the architecture that was mapped out just a few years ago, Teets said.
