The emergence of new proliferated constellations offering commercial broadband could be the answer U.S. Northern Command needs to establish reliable Arctic communications.
Hughes and OneWeb working to fill military’s Arctic communication gap May 6 The OneWeb gateway in Svalbard, Norway, capable of 10,000 hand-offs per second, is one of the gateways developed by Hughes that will orchestrate handover and tracking of gigabits of data for NORTHCOM. (OneWeb/Kongsberg Satellite Service) WASHINGTON The U.S. Air Force is teaming up with Hughes Network Systems and OneWeb to test how the latter’s new commercial broadband satellites could fill the military’s Arctic communications gap, the two companies announced May 5. The businesses will work with the Air Force Research Lab to connect Arctic military bases to each other and the joint force via OneWeb’s growing low-Earth orbit satellite constellation. Hughes will serve as the prime contractor, leading adaptation, integration, testing and management for the demonstration. Intellian will provide user terminals that can connect to the OneWeb network.