Why the Pentagon is spending billions to build its own satellite constellation

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Low Earth orbit satellite constellations are all the rage, but up to this point they’ve been the prospective domain of commercial entities. Now the U.S. military wants in on the action — thanks in part to inroads made by the likes of Starlink, OneWeb, Planet and more — and it’s spending big, turning to a variety of companies to build a satellite network unlike any the military has built before. Lockheed Martin is one of the major winners so far under the Space Development Agency, or SDA, a part of the U.S. Space Force and one of its three acquisition divisions. SDA is about to launch the second mission of its constellation known as the “Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture,” or PWSA. “It’s a mesh network, an internet in space that allows you to [connect] from any point on Earth and [back down to] any point on Earth,” said Chris Winslett, Lockheed’s program director for building Transport satellites. One key motivator behind the Pentagon building out its own constellation – rather than utilizing commercial networks that are already operational: security. “Any time you’re using an open network, it’s always less secure … the other side is controlling the availability, the quality of service,” Winslett explained. “If you’re just a user, one of many users on another network, you’re subject to whoever owns that network and how they set their priority and the traffic that’s going to be on that network that may not be your traffic.”