Before the U.S. Army’s 3rd Infantry Division heads back to Iraq, its
units are expected to receive upgraded satellite communications and new vehicles
outfitted with the command-and-control computers and radios.
The $50 million effort is only one piece of a broader plan to expand the availability
of satellite communications systems throughout the Army, officials said. Specifically,
the chief of staff said he wants satellite technology to become widely available
to battalion-level units, which traditionally have not had access to non-line-of-sight
communications systems. Usually, those only were found at the divisions and
brigades.
The notion that lower echelons need better capabilities to receive and send
information underpins the latest Army attempt to restructure into smaller, more
agile units. Rather than deploy “division-centric” forces, Chief
of Staff Gen. Peter J. Schoomaker wants to build the service around “modular”
brigades. Under this new organization, each brigade’s battalion commanders
will have more responsibility and authority to make tactical decisions.
Pushing satellite communications to the battalion level is a new concept in
the Army. “That’s never been done before,” said Col. LaWarren
Patterson, a division chief at the office of the Army chief information officer.
“Traditionally, satellite communications were mostly found at the division
level, and in some instances at the brigade level.”
Patterson’s office is seeking funds to accelerate purchases and deliveries
to the field of commercial satellite terminals.
“That’s going to be a big investment,” he told National Defense.
“Over the next four to five years, every battalion will get satellite
communications capabilities.”
The 3rd ID’s network will be a Ku-band commercial system. The goal is
to allow each brigade to execute “battle command on the move,” meaning
that commanders will be able to move away from their stationary command posts,
usually built in tents, to track and redirect their forces. With a Ku-band network,
“battalion commanders can see the same operating picture and get the same
data that now is only at the division and brigade levels,” Patterson said.
Ku-band commercial satellite communications, however, are not always viewed
as the ideal solution, according to some military officials. Connections may
not be available in remote, unpopulated parts of the world, because commercial
suppliers steer their satellites to more densely urbanized areas. Nevertheless,
the Defense Department must rely on these services, because military satellites
lack sufficient capacity to meet the services’ insatiable thirst for bandwidth.
“Ku-band only exists over population centers,” said Lt. Gen. Steven
Boutelle, the Army’s chief information officer. “There’s none
in Equatorial Africa.”
In response to Army complaints about poor Ku-band coverage over Afghanistan,
suppliers fixed the problem, Boutelle told an industry conference sponsored
by U.S. Joint Forces Command.
“After we were in Afghanistan a few months, the commercial world decided
there was a market for Ku-band, and they did steer beams over Afghanistan,”
said Boutelle. “They still are not over the Horn of Africa, which we’re
in now, and we still use L-band there.”
According to Scott Dunderdale, business development director at General Dynamics
C4 Systems, Ku-band coverage over the Horn of Africa was made available, after
Boutelle voiced concerns.
General Dynamics has developed a Ku-band command-and-control vehicle prototype
that, the company claims, is the only system of its kind that can perform “battle
command on the move,” said Dunderdale. Unlike current command-and-control
vehicles, which are equipped with Inmarsat dial-up satellite communications,
the Ku-band system can receive and transmit heavy loads of data at high speeds.
The data-rate for Inmarsat is 64 kilobits per second, while the Ku wideband
pipes transmit at 512 kilobits per second, and receive at 2 megabits per second.
The Ku-band equipped vehicle is still in development and the technology is
not yet mature enough for real-world operations, Dunderdale said. The company
hopes the Army will buy the system, after it’s tested later this year.
Patterson said the Army recognizes the need for commercial systems, but military
satellites often are the preferred options, mostly because they provide better
coverage and secure lines.
“We’ll always have to have some commercial capacity. We are never
going to be able to go to 100 percent military,” he said.
The current mix is about 80/20, with the majority of the satellite communications
coming from commercial suppliers. “Our birds are old and oversaturated,”
said Patterson. The Defense Department has several programs under way to deploy
new constellations in the coming years. “Once our new constellations go
up, we hope we can change that ratio to 60/40 or 70/30 mix, with 70 percent
military and 30 percent commercial.”
Included in the funds requested for the 3rd ID is $3.6 million for three command-and-control
armored Humvee trucks. Army Communications and Electronics Command engineers
will build the vehicles this summer, once the funding is approved. They estimated
it takes about four months to take a basic Humvee and turn it into a command-and-control
platform.
It took CECOM engineers and tech-savvy soldiers about 100 days to set up the
command-and-control armored vehicle that served as Gen. William Wallace’s
command post during the invasion of Iraq and the early stages of the war.
That vehicle, called the C2V, is built on a Bradley chassis. Although the Army
cancelled the C2V program years ago, it had 26 vehicles in the inventory, 15
of which were sent to Iraq. The 3rd ID brought three of them back to Fort Stewart,
Ga., for training. The other 12 remain in Iraq.
Wallace’s C2V was stuffed with least $1 million worth of electronics.
The Inmarsat phone bill for the march from Kuwait to Baghdad ran about $1.3
million. The steep per-minute charges have prompted CECOM to seek a new arrangement
with Inmarsat, one that would be based on a flat fee for specified services.
In the 2006-2011 budget, the Army will request funds for significantly large
quantities of command-and-control vehicles, CECOM officials said. The plan is
to buy 47 C2Vs on Bradley chassis, 97 command-and-control Humvees and 10 commander
Strykers. The computers and mission equipment would be common to all three variants.
The Humvees and Bradleys can accommodate three workstations, while the Stryker
has room for four.
A proposal is now under review to eventually upgrade the Stryker commander’s
vehicle to a “mobile battle command on the move” Stryker that would
replace the traditional, ground-based command post.