Government, Satellite Industry Make Case for Hosted Payload Capability
Budget constraints, the threat of spending sequestration and better efficiency are driving the need for expanded deployment of hosted payloads for government use, satellite industry officials said Thursday at the Hosted Payload Summit in Washington. The U.S. and foreign governments are realizing that hosted payload capabilities can meet their requirements for different missions, they said. Challenges, like export restrictions and spectrum approvals, are still impacting progress, they said.
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There were events in government and in the space industry that led to government interest in hosted payloads, said Douglas Loverro, executive director at the SES Space and Missile Systems Center. The Obama administration FY13 budget “included content pointing to the use of hosted payloads,” he said. “There were dollars in the budget to go ahead and fund future hosted payload efforts.” Projects like the Space Modernization Initiative (SMI), Commercially Hosted Infrared Payload Replenishment and Milsatcomm are government initiatives that are centered around hosted payloads, he said. They help to “further our understanding of hosted payloads, further the decisions that will be made in the budget” and further the spending of the $300 million or more in investments of the SMI work, he said.
There are indications that momentum is starting to pick up and people are starting to recognize that hosted payloads are making a big impact in future plans for the Department of Defense and the commercial industry, Loverro said. NASA’s deal with Space Systems/Loral (SS/L), which involved delivering a new propulsion system, advanced the business model for government and commercial deals, he said. The government worked directly with SS/L, he said: The deal demonstrated “that there’s more than one way for the government and commercial industry to partner on hosted payloads.” The government and private sector partnerships can assure Congress that hosted payload platforms are sustainable, affordable and useful arrangements for the DOD and industry, he added.
Partnerships between the public and private sectors in the international arena also help make the case for hosted payload deployment, satellite industry executives said during a panel. This year, Intelsat’s UHF-frequency hosted payload reached operational capability on orbit and provides service to the U.S. and Australian governments, said Don Brown, Intelsat General’s hosted payload programs vice president. The capability was reached in less than three years from the contract, he said. The Australian Defence Force said it saved more than $150 million over alternative procurement approaches, he said. ADF found that the hosted payload option “was 50 percent more effective on an economic basis than any free flyer [satellite]… and 180 percent more efficient than leasing,” he added. The missions going forward “will frame what happens long-term in this industry,” said Bill Gattle, Aerospace Systems vice president at Harris Corp. The telecom industry “will pull things through hosted payloads,” he said. There also is movement in asset tracking worldwide, he said.
For the international market, the hosted payload community is still tackling spectrum policy, said Boeing’s Space & Intelligence Vice President Jim Simpson. Obtaining spectrum policy approvals will help the industry use military types of frequencies and get them licensed “so that we could complement programs of record if we're going to be doing hosted payloads,” he said.
Reform of International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) and bills, like the National Defense Authorization Act and the Safeguarding U.S. Satellite Leadership and Security Act, introduced by Sen. Michael Bennet, D-Colo., could increase business deals between satellite companies in the U.S. and other nations, satellite industry professionals said during a different panel. There are deals that aren’t happening because of the ITAR rules around them, said Frank Slazer, space systems vice president at the Aerospace Industries Association. Many deals and opportunities, like the Intelsat deal with ADF, don’t happen “because when foreign nations and companies look at doing work with the United States, they just turn away because they see this ITAR rule out there,” he said.
ITAR isn’t a major limiting factor to hosted payload progress, said Joshua Hartman, Horizon Strategies Group CEO. “ITAR is a problem that needs to be reformed,” he said. But “the problems that preclude hosted payloads from becoming a critical component of our architectures have little to do with ITAR,” he said: It has to do with cultures, “it has to do with business models” and technical risk. Hartman agreed that foreign companies that produce satellites are unlikely to get hosted payload business from the U.S. market: “ITAR prevents that from happening and is likely to continue to prevent that from happening.”