Air Force Research Lab, NORTHCOM Eye Commercial Internet Sats For Arctichttps://breakingdefense.com/2021/03/afrl-northcom-eye-commercial-internet-sats-for-arctic/“Communications is incredibly challenging north of 65 [i.e., the 65th parallel] in the Arctic.
“The Air Force plans to prototype and test Arctic Communications capability north of 55-degrees latitude, where many current SATCOM options lose coverage. This effort, which leverages the emerging commercial space internet, will include ground terminal deployments to various DoD Arctic sites, and the funding of limited service capability for the purpose of DoD experimentation,”
The experiments are part of AFRL’s larger Defense Experimentation Using the Commercial Space Internet (DEUCSI) program, nicknamed
‘Global Lightning,’ managed by SDPE, Air Force officials told Breaking D. Global Lightning is testing the reliability of space-based Internet networks to provide high-speed, data-rich communications to aircraft and ground stations, as well as prototyping mobile terminals and modern, open systems software to use with those networks.
... AFRL has made awards to multiple commercial vendors under the Global Lightning program, Beal added, including
SpaceX, Iridium, L3Harris, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, SES-GS, Ball Aerospace, O3B and Telesat. However, he sad, “We have not yet announced the contractors for the Arctic portions of Global Lightning, but will do so when able.”
Indeed, AFRL already has tested connecting AC-130s and KC-135s to SpaceX’s Starlink megaconstellation in Low Earth Orbit (LEO, between about 100 and 2,000 kilometers in altitude.) SpaceX was awarded a $28 million contract last year for Global Lightning experiments.
