20 December 2024

MILSATCOM for the most critical no-fail missions


Satellite communication is so reliable and commonplace it’s easy for everyday users to take it for granted, whether watching live sports or checking email mid-flight.

Since the 1980s, militaries have also migrated to space-based communications systems. Ensuring the U.S. military and its allies have continuous communication capability, however, is more complicated than providing cable television and internet service to consumers. Military satellite communications (MILSATCOM) systems need to fight through adversary jamming, operate despite ground station disruptions, withstand challenging environmental conditions, and mitigate an ever-growing set of attack approaches.

In short, protected MILSATCOM systems need to be no-fail — and no company has more experience in delivering on these stringent requirements than Northrop Grumman, said David Doami, senior director of MILSATCOM and Sustainment at Northrop Grumman.

“MILSATCOM systems are used to communicate the highest priority messages that we have in our country including the president, as commander in chief, commanding the combatant commanders and our strategic forces,” said Doami, pointing to Northrop Grumman’s decades of designing and delivering strategic SATCOM for the U.S. military. “During the Cold War, we had a single nuclear threat, and space supported the air, ground and sea domains. Today, we have multiple nuclear-capable threats and space itself is a contested domain. In this environment, survivable and assured MILSATCOM are more critical than ever before as a vital communications link for the warfighter.”

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