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Countering the Loss of Satellite Communications and GPS September 2009
As U.S. military services continue to use satellites to increase and improve their operational abilities, the satellites and their capabilities have also become a more inviting target to adversaries. Two space-based capabilities—satellite communications (SATCOM) and the global positioning system (GPS)—have allowed U.S. warfighters to plan and execute major operations faster and better than ever before. But what would happen if our satellite systems were seriously degraded by a potential adversary? This threat was clearly highlighted in 2007 when the Chinese military used a ballistic missile to knock out one of its old weather satellites 537 miles above Earth. It generated at least 2,300 pieces of debris the size of golf balls or larger, creating the danger of damaging other satellites in their way. Threats to deny, deceive, disrupt, degrade, or destroy U.S. space capabilities had been growing for years. The ability of nations such as China to threaten our vital satellite systems was taken seriously by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), and steps were taken to equip future satellites with sensors that can detect impending attacks. Although satellite protection techniques were being developed, MITRE pointed out a problem that hadn't yet been fully addressed: How would our military and intelligence communities do their jobs without the use of SATCOM or GPS? Getting the job done under compromised conditions is one of MITRE's mission assurance initiatives (see sidebar at left).
"We're very dependent on satellite communications for military operations," says Sarah MacConduibh (pronounced Mac-con-if). She is executive director of the Air Force Program Engineering Office in MITRE's DoD Command, Control, Communications, and Intelligence (C3I) federally funded research and development center. "Further, while the GPS satellites provide signals for navigation by aircraft, ships, and ground transport, their biggest use is for the timing of networks, automatic teller machines in the banking system, and even power grids. "In early 2008, there wasn't a critical mass of energy working on the degraded SATCOM or GPS problem. So we started an internal project to help us understand the functional and operational impact of realistic threats. The project is called 'Operations Without Space [OWS]: Maintaining Essential Operations with Denied or Degraded Space Services.' It recognizes that our satellite infrastructure can't be made invulnerable. But we can plan for degraded space capabilities and develop alternative methods to operate through the loss of space-based services." Looking for Cross-Service Solutions In early 2008, MacConduibh pulled together a team of four, including herself. (At the time, she was the Director of Integration for Joint Networks within the C3I FFRDC.) As the team talked to other MITRE project managers about the issue, they in turn talked to their military customers, who saw how OWS could benefit their programs. The team brings together a wide range of expertise, including high-performance military networking, advanced space and information systems, network integration, integrated sensing and situational awareness, and strategic and tactical airborne communications. Says Malcolm Airst, current OWS Joint Network Integration chief engineer of MITRE's Navy IT and engineering department: "Because this was an internally initiated program, it allowed us to collect a team from across the company whose members were not working for any one sponsor. That allowed us to think across a range of disciplines and come up with a set of solutions that were often outside the constraints of sponsor-supported work." Problem Area's Thought Leader Getting the problem recognized as a critical issue took time. As the OWS team continued to meet with senior military and DoD officials, however, recognition of the issue gained momentum. Over the last year, MITRE has become the thought leader in mitigating degraded space-based communications. At a conference with the Navy and the National Reconnaissance Office this year, for example, only two non-government people sat on a panel investigating the problem. They were MacConduibh and Sunoy Banerjee, a lead systems engineer supporting Navy networking and communications programs at MITRE. "MITRE is sought after because of our close relationship to the services, their command and control organizations, and their acquisition communities," explains MacConduibh. "We're familiar with the operations, acquisition processes, and the technologies used by the services. Experience in all three of those domains is needed to facilitate a dialogue that will get warfighters to think about the impact of degraded space assets to their operations and how they might be able to operate through." "Operating through" means developing redundancies or mitigations to keep operating with resources that are still available. In one case, for example, a certain capability was slated for retirement aboard Airborne Warning and Control System aircraft (more commonly known as AWACS). OWS team members suggested keeping the capability because it's an alternative when GPS isn't available. "This mitigation technique is a fast way to become more robust in the near-term," says MacConduibh. Interagency Collaboration is Key Another example is a radio system used by the services for which MITRE offered advice for altering some design approaches. The OWS team helped develop a variety of other mitigation strategies for the services. "We delivered threat baselines and several mitigation strategies that we believe are realistic and reasonably cost-effective in the near- and mid-term," says Robert Abramson, a principal defense space systems engineer and member of the OWS core team. "One of the challenges is that you can't require individual programs within a service, or the service itself, to address mitigation in a stovepipe. You need an enterprise solution. Getting the proper interagency collaboration and synchronization is part of our role." Warfighters have been receptive to the OWS team's efforts. Requests for briefings fill the team's calendars. Says MacConduibh: "Warfighters say they really need to be informed when there's a problem with SATCOM and GPS. If they know there's a problem, they find a way to complete the mission, one way or another. If they know they can't rely on their GPS, they'll carry on in a different way." Now, all of the services have kicked off related efforts to assess their ability to operate through an attack or other situation that causes loss of system capabilities. They're addressing the questions that will keep warfighters up to strength. Do they know that they are being jammed? Do they know what to do? Do they have the tactics, techniques, and procedures? Are they trained in using the mitigation plans? As a result of the OWS effort, MITRE's customers are assessing their vulnerabilities. "They are starting to change their techniques, tactics, and procedures and their tests, concepts of operations, and exercises," says MacConduibh. "They are developing new technical solutions and changing requirements for acquisitions, plus changing policies and developing new partnerships. MITRE will continue to make recommendations to the DoD and the intelligence community to address the evolving threat to space-based capabilities and the associated impact on mission execution." —by David A. Van Cleave Related Information Articles and News
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