US Space Force to develop satellite ground communication system for nuclear war scenario

News, US May 5, 2023 , by IRIA No Comments

The U.S. Space Force has awarded two $30 million contracts to the American defense giants, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies, to develop ground system prototypes for Evolved Strategic Satcom (ESS) program that can survive a nuclear attack.

ESS is the U.S. Space Force’s classified satellite communication program that aims to provide satellite connectivity and communication in an event of a nuclear war. Several other defense manufacturing companies have been a part of the ESS program including Boeing and Northrop Grumman which are developing competing satellite designs.

The Pentagon plans to spend $6.5 billion on the ESS program over the next five years. The service’s fiscal 2024 budget request includes $216 million for the effort. That funding supports the ground system prototyping activity as well as the creation of a classified development environment.

The United States Space Force has requested a $30 billion budget for Fiscal Year 2024 to counter threats and threats to the U.S. space assets. The request for an additional amount is about $3.9 billion more than what was enacted for the service in Fiscal Year 2023. According to the U.S. Department of Defense, “More than 60% of the Space Force budget, about $19.2 billion worth, is aimed at research, development, testing and evaluation”.

The ESS satellites and ground systems will be part of the nation’s nuclear communications architecture that allows the president, through the military chain of command, to command and control strategic bombers, ballistic submarines, and intercontinental ballistic missiles.

^{U.S. Space Command personnel during Global Lightning 2021, which integrated space capabilities into a multi-domain exercise at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado. (Image Credit: U.S. Space Command/Lewis Carlyle)}

Two prototypes for the ground systems for the ESS program would be developed by two teams over the course of 18 months. Lockheed Martin has employed Stratagem, Integrity-Communications-Solutions, Infinity, and BAE Systems to develop its prototype for the ground systems. While Raytheon’s team includes Dell, Seed Innovations, Infinity, Kratos, Northrop Grumman, Rocket Communications, Parsons, Polaris Alpha, Quantum Research, Koverse, Caliola Engineering, Kythera, Northstrat Inc., Optimal, RKF Engineering and Ascension Engineering.

Based on the performance and more importantly, the durability to withstand a nuclear attack, one of the two prototypes would be selected by the U.S. Space Force to proceed further into production.

The Space Force released a statement regarding the prototype contract awards saying that the teams are expected to design software applications that integrate into a “cyber-resilient architecture” and will work closely with the operators who will ultimately use the capability, an approach aimed at delivering updates at a rapid pace.