TacSat-1 Satellite Designed to Meet Needs of Tactical Level Commanders

Naval Center Also Works on Laser Communications to Bolster Exchange of Information

By PATRICIA KIME
Sea Power Correspondent

Few elements of the nation’s intelligence apparatus have caused more foot-stomping consternation by military commanders than the lack of readily available intelligence resources. Commanders complain that the White House and the nation’s intelligence agencies have priority when it comes to tasking America’s sophisticated spy satellites and that the military needs intelligence assets that are simpler, less costly and respond on demand to commanders’ requirements for information.

Scientists at the Naval Center for Space Technology, a unit of the Navy Research Laboratory (NRL), say they are involved in creating a solution. It is TacSat-1, a small, cheap satellite that can take high quality pictures, detect and identify radio frequency signals and would operate at the beck and call of military commanders.

TacSat-1 is more than another satellite. It’s indicative of the NRL’s determination to remain at the forefront of intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance research this year with a number of experiments that, when operational, will give commanders quicker access to a wide range of data and capabilities.

Located in Washington, D.C., the NRL lists among its successes the invention of radar in 1934 and the launch of the first operational intelligence satellite in 1960.

The Naval Center for Space Technology also is making headway on sending data via laser communications — research that, if successful, would speed linkages from ship to shore and ship to ship. Laser communication research is done elsewhere in the United States, but the Navy lab is unique in testing it in the marine environment.

TacSat-1 was initiated by the Defense Department’s Office of Force Transformation (OFT) and is a partnership between the Navy lab, Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), Air Force Space Command, NASA and the National Reconnaissance Office. The satellite is scheduled for launch this summer. Now in its final systems test phase, TacSat-1 is expected to go into space as soon as its launch vehicle — the Falcon I rocket built by the private firm SpaceX — is ready.

Construction of TacSat-1 began just nine months ago with a goal to build and launch, in one year, an inexpensive craft to enhance commanders’ ISR capabilities. To cost just $15 million, the program is part of a concept developed by the OFT called “Operationally Responsive Space.”

The idea is to design “military capabilities directly for the operational commander,” said Arthur Cebrowski, OFT director, in a March 25 statement to the Senate strategic forces panel. The key attribute of the concept “is that the field commanders drive the demand,” he said. “Rather than treating our operational and tactical level commanders as lesser-included, this business model designs a capability to meet their specific warfighting needs.”

The micro-satellite, 3 feet in height with a diameter of 3 feet, is composed mainly of off-the-shelf components and weighs less than 300 pounds. It carries several payloads, including a thermal infrared camera, a color visible light camera and a device that detects, tracks and identifies radio frequency signals.

The satellite is intended to provide relevant information to tactical forces and will disseminate information through the military’s secure Internet capability, SIPRNET. It will take direct tasking from commanders, use sensors and cameras to collect information and then relay it back, if it works as planned.

“This is unique in that it is testing operational responsiveness. If I’m a commander and I have a weakness or a gap and I went to the [National Reconnaissance Office] or some other office, it might take years to respond. We’re trying to demonstrate that space can be used more tactically and more operationally,” John Schaub, associate superintendent of the spacecraft engineering department at the Naval Center for Space Technology told Sea Power.

Schaub said he expects to test the satellite soon after it is launched. Once it is in its scheduled low-earth orbit, operators will initiate tests to ensure it is working and then take requirements from regional combatant commanders participating in the test exercise.

Experiments will involve commanders directing the satellite to take pictures or use sensors to obtain data for tactical requirements. TacSat-1 will then transmit that data to the commanders via the SIPRNET.

“The goal is to call up the capability of this in three to five days, to have an operational commander say ‘I’ve got an issue; I don’t have the coverage I need, and three to five days later, we could provide that geographical coverage,” Schaub said.

Schaub said he expects the TacSat-1 experiments to last about a year. “Our lifetime goal was one year because we wanted to make a modest investment, and we wanted to see if it worked first,” he said.

Getting data to the tactical users has always been a challenge to both land and marine commanders. In the land environment, commanders seldom have enough lines to tackle the amount of data streaming in from the battlefield or from higher-ups. Aboard ship, that limitation is often magnified, as vessels may have an abundance of data communications links, but a lack of bandwidth to handle all the links.

In seeking innovative ways to move information between tactical units on land, at sea or in the air, the Naval Center for Space Technology’s Optical Research Facility is conducting experiments with laser communications over water.

An emerging technology, laser communications, if employed successfully, can provide high-capacity data transmissions at speeds up to hundreds of megabits or even gigabits-per-second. Another advantage is the low power requirement for such systems. Laser communications also are fundamentally more secure than other wireless communications, such as radio frequency, because lasers generate extremely narrow beams that are less capable of being compromised, jammed or intercepted.

Lasers are capable of sending data at speeds of 1,000 times faster than radio frequencies. Forty gigabits in a single laser wavelength is about current state of the art. In a March 19 experiment, the lab was able to transmit data at 2.5 gigabits per second for an hour with a very low error rate.

During the test, Navy Research Laboratory scientists transmitted high-quality commercial DVDs — including the “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring” — to demonstrate the capability of transmitting real-time high-resolution video such as reconnaissance imagery.

The test was hailed a success as scientists proved they could transmit in clear weather, in light rain and fog. In another test, they streamed video from ship to shore, and in a third test, sent data from a small unmanned aerial vehicle to a receiver.

Laser communications between ships face challenges with stabilization and tracking, Naval Center physicists said, and are the furthest from application.

“There are things you need to do on ship as far as stabilization, acquisition and tracking that are difficult problems that we have worked a little bit on, but haven’t had the funding to solve,” said Michael Vilcheck, a Navy physicist. He estimated that deployment of a ship-to-ship system could take two to 10 years.

But other systems — especially the modulating retro-reflection system used between ship and shore — could see operational testing much sooner. Christopher Moore, a Navy research physicist, said the special operations community is interested in that technology.

Modulating retro-reflector systems foster two-way optical communications using a laser, telescope and pointer-tracker on one compact platform. The technology currently is in development at the Naval Research Lab.

“This is potentially an immediate application as far as special ops goes. The SEALs are very interested in it,” Moore said.

The Naval Center for Space Technology was founded in 1986 as the Navy’s lead agency for space research. It is tasked with preserving and enhancing the Navy’s space technology base and providing expertise in the development and acquisitions of space technology that has a naval mission application.