Why military satellite communications need multi-orbit connectivity

Christopher Baugh

Welcome to the Analysys Mason podcast. My name is Christopher Baugh. I'm a partner at Analysys Mason and the head of our Space research division. 

Today, I'm joined by one of my colleagues, Sarah Halpin, who is an analyst at Analysys Mason and also the head of our Government and Military Space programme. Welcome, Sarah. Welcome to the podcast.

Sarah Halpin

Thanks for having me.

Christopher Baugh

Sarah covers the Government and Military Space programme; we're taking a jump down into a very important topic, which is multi-orbit. The theme of the podcast is, is multi-orbit the new must-have for military satcom? 

Multi-orbit comes across all of space, not just military, but we're going to take a deep dive into just this specific segment. So Sarah, can you tell us a little bit about the multi-orbit activity in the government military space market and why it's important? Why right now? Why should our clients be interested?

The shift to multi-orbit strategies

Sarah Halpin

Absolutely. Thanks, Chris. 

Multi-orbit activity is an interesting one in the government and military sector right now. Multi-orbit talk has been on the rise through 2024. As we've seen, commercial entities like SES or Intelsat have been testing and progressing multi-orbit offerings, services and technology. Talk has truly skyrocketed with the recent announcement of the cancellation of the JP9102 project by the Australian government in favour of a multi-orbit strategy. When you add this to the EU's multi-orbit IRIS2 plans and the US government's 2024 multi-orbit activity, I think we can safely say that global governments are pivoting towards a multi-orbit connectivity goal - and where larger, more established space nations tend to go, the smaller and newly engaged countries are going to follow. Space is a war-fighting domain, and with geopolitical instability unfortunately growing, no one is going to be able to afford to be left behind when it comes to national security abilities. With the global increases in defence budgets likely to continue in 2025, industry players should take note now and prepare to respond to this incoming demand.

Christopher Baugh

Thanks, Sarah. You pointed to an interesting trend that happened, the Australian Ministry of Defence and some of the others, that move to multi-orbit. Coming down from GEO to MEO and, ultimately, LEO. Why multi-orbit? Why are these entities going in that direction? Is GEO just not sufficient for them? What is it about multi-orbit that's so appealing to military and, ultimately, government entities?

Sarah Halpin

That's a really good question. We all hear a lot about the great benefits of the various satellite orbits in play. GEO satellites are great at reliably delivering large amounts of capacity to high-demand locations. LEO satellites offer global coverage and low latency connections, all fantastic positives. But no single satellite can address all needs at all times. For government military entities looking to make rapid or, most importantly, well-informed decisions, they don't want to think orbit. They want connectivity, they want quality of service as needed, and multi-orbit connectivity offers that. 

When you look at practical terms, if we think of something like the US military and its PACE communication strategy. They want primary, alternative, contingency, and emergency communication options. Multi-orbital networks align well with this. You have a soldier in a poor location for GEO use; switch over to LEO and achieve your goal. So this ensures that governments have reliable and resilient connectivity, even under challenging but mission-critical circumstances. At its core, the Gov/Mill market end user is orbit agnostic. The real want is the quality of service, the flexibility, scalability, and probably very high up there as well, competitive pricing. A particular benefit of this approach, too, if you look more towards the industry side of things, particularly for GEO players - I mentioned GEO and non-GEO satellites have their distinct advantages, but the incoming NGSO capacity has been challenging for the industry. Realistically, matching SpaceX alone in terms of launch or iteration abilities is not really possible, however, offering a multi-orbit solution and addressing such upcoming needs could ensure that market share capture potential is something that can remain. When you look at the likes of Eutelsat testing their multi-orbit terminals or SES and their GEO-MEO maritime plans progressing this year, it showcases that this is a good opportunity.

Christopher Baugh

I agree. I think it is the way of the future for commercial and military government entities. 

One piece of news that happened recently was the U.S. Space Force Department of Defence upped its budget for proliferated pLEO, spending from $900 million to $13 billion. The vast majority of that initial buy is SpaceX. It's interesting because it seems like so much of the volume and traffic is shifting to LEO today. When we say multi-orbit, I would assume most of the balance going forward is LEO in terms of future demand. Is that correct? Or do we expect an orbital balance of traffic management going forward?

Sarah Halpin

It's an interesting point that you bring up there. That announcement was one that I think took us all, maybe not by surprise in the announcement itself, but the size of the announcement was so substantial. 

In the short term, the LEO opportunity is very hard to deny, particularly when we're looking at the dynamic environment and dynamic situation that the government market finds itself in. Since this is a situation that is shifting rapidly year on year, we have increased geopolitical instability in new locations, advances and decreases in various current ones. LEO will take priority in the short term, but when we look at the multi-orbit situation, I think the real challenge to getting that balanced approach is a technological one. The interest is still in GEO-abilities and MEO, and going up to the HEO orbits as well, there are benefits there, but the technology needs to advance, and the pricing needs to become competitive before we're going to see a push there for a balanced network ability.

Christopher Baugh

Thank you. It's an interesting thing for commercial, the LEO side being so much a part of the growth story. It brings into question the long-term viability of the GEO business as a standalone. You have to be in another orbit somewhere or other. You talked about challenges, and I think there are many here. So this is not something where we just push a button, and everybody has a multi-orbit solution. What are the challenges that users or even operators themselves face in implementing a multi-orbit solution in this space?

Challenges of multi-orbit connectivity

Sarah Halpin

Wouldn't the ‘push-the-button’ situation be so nice! 

At its core, for us to get to this balanced multi-orbit connectivity, allowing all the benefits all the time, we have three key issues here: technology, logistics, and pricing. Digging into it, multi-orbit connectivity enablers are relatively new. The ability to switch from orbit to orbit has been active for years, but the true multi-orbit connectivity end goal is to see end users with one terminal for all. That ability is still developing. We've only just hit the one-year anniversary of Kymeta's first multi-orbit on-the-move flat panel antenna for government military applications. We're just seeing the release of ALL.SPACE’s own first multi-orbit flat panel antenna. ThinKom is also just finishing off the testing of their terminal this year. 

With this amount of new and complex technology coming online, usability and cost-effectiveness are always going to be a question before widespread adoption occurs. The size, weight and power question loan has got to be an essential ask for interested Gov/Mill players. Part of the attractiveness of the LEO connectivity is these questions are already answered, but this is an ongoing theory. More complexity means more cost. 

This is going to apply to the ground segments as well. Operators need a ground segment able to support this type of complex operation. Providing a critical capacity for seamless multi-orbit operations is a substantial ask and a substantial financial ask. When you add to it the current push for ensuring that allied interoperability is supported, the performance gained versus investment has to be assessed. I'm not trying to sound extremely negative here; this is a new ability, it is a long time coming, and the demand is real, but there are challenges to be overcome. I have no doubt they will, and we are seeing the movement towards it. All indications are this market is going to accelerate rapidly, but those challenges must be overcome first.

Christopher Baugh

Yes, I would agree. You've been part of, and our team has been part of, a lot of work with clients, the actual defence clients, and it comes back most often to the antennas, the terminals on the ground, and having them certified, having them out in the field and used. That is a challenging thing. The military entities have been operating in these siloed environments for so long, not just orbital but also commercial versus protected waveforms. So you've got a wide range of challenges, not least of which is also orchestration in that environment. We have really smart engineers in our industry that I'm sure will eventually solve this. But this is not, as they say, a slam dunk anytime soon. But the need is there. The demand is there. It's that gap between need and solution, it seems, at the moment. Would you agree?

Sarah Halpin

100%

The role of security in multi-orbit solutions

Christopher Baugh

So, I'm turning the tables a little bit onto security. Where does security sit in all of this? Why is this such an important thing, and the theme of security for military entities and government users, can you elaborate a bit on that?

Sarah Halpin

Absolutely. This is a good question because we are seeing this significant growth in geopolitical instability, and we're seeing an associated growth in cyber attacks. Even in the last year, reported jamming attacks from maritime and commercial airlines are up something in the region of 400% and are continuing to increase. So, there is a growing increase and a growing need to look at national security. This is a good opportunity for multi-orbit service providers, as having the ability to switch signals when interference occurs can support the resiliency of connectivity during a critical mission. When your LEO signal is being jammed, move to your GEO. There are challenges in ensuring that the terminals are up to standard, are recognised, and are ready for use out in the field. I wonder what the case is regarding the security of shifting to one terminal for all orbital approaches in such technologically challenging situations for security. So, if you have a terminal that is successfully targeted by bad actors and that is your one terminal for all, what happens then? When we talk about security, I should probably highlight that this national security push and national security interest increase does have some ramifications for suppliers in our industry right now. As the security focus grows, it can, in some circumstances, dictate and limit commercial opportunity as government agencies continue to look at domestic suppliers for equipment and services where national security is concerned.

Christopher Baugh

That's a great theme because you think about all of the orbits, maybe waveforms all coming into one antenna and the impact to that should it go down. It's kind of, be careful what you ask for; what are we architecting and engineering towards? That, I agree, is a major impact on the space. 

We do a lot of forward-looking assessments that are part of our DNA, and I'm looking at this trend specifically in the military space. When will we see the inflection point of a multi-orbit solution in this segment, where do you see that happening and when?

Future predictions for multi-orbit adoption

Sarah Halpin

I suppose it comes down to the definition of what we're going to call the inflection point for this industry. This is something we've been following closely this year ourselves, and it's something we're planning on digging into further through our Government and Military Space programme. We're seeing some providers already offering some flavour of multi-orbit solutions, be it GEO and LEO or MEO and GEO, basically through well-integrated ground segment architecture. As we've mentioned here, technology ability is growing, and it's growing rapidly. Testing is underway. We can certainly expect 2025 to see further developments in the adoption of LEO, MEO and GEO together, hybrid networks across government and military applications. So that might be inflection point one. But inflection point two of that widespread global use may be a little further down the line since the LEO capacity is still coming into play, and the ramifications of it are still yet to be fully explored. We're waiting for Kuiper, etc., to make their mark. 

So, inflection point one is probably 2025, but inflection point two is a little further down the line. I know we talk about government players typically having deeper pockets, but pricing strategy and quality of service are going to be key to service penetration here. The future is bright. It’s just going to take a little work to get there.

Christopher Baugh

OK, very good. Again, that gap between need and solution, price, performance, and all of those matters. 

We work in a programme-based environment in our world. This is a key theme throughout our research this year and going forward. Is this something the Government Military Space Programme will be digging into over the next 12 months, and where might it be seen throughout some of our research in your programme?

Sarah Halpin

Yes. One of the great things about our programmes this year has been the opportunity to address market developments as they arise. With so much discussion from clients as to the multi-orbit opportunity, we're planning on adding our assessment of the sector to the programme research catalogue in the new year. It's also expected to be peppered across all our activity as we examine the ramifications through our commercial satellite communications (comsatcom) or military satellite communications (milsatcom) research. For what you can expect to see next year, just keep an eye out on the website.

Christopher Baugh

Excellent, Sarah. Wonderful. Well, thank you for your insights today on a trend that is a major development happening across the space industry. This is a good deep dive into the military and government user base.

There is more content on this topic on the Analysys Mason website. I will point you to the research and insights dropdown on the website. Our programmes, including this one, are highlighted in the top middle of that page with all of our space programmes. 

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