Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Inc. and SES successfully executed a fully virtualized satellite communications (SATCOM) ground system demonstration for the U.S. Army?s Combat Capabilities Development Command, both announced April 17, 2024. Kratos and SES successfully showed a flexible network architecture facilitating simultaneous communication pathways for resilient SATCOM. This virtualized and containerized architecture enables soldiers to position their radio frequency (RF) hardware and software-defined hubs anywhere globally.

In an industry first, the demonstration showed seamless operation supporting satellites in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) on a make-before-break mode over SES?s O3b MEO satellite network. Make-before-break is an essential capability for MEO and LEO satellite constellations referring to the ability to transfer communication sessions while the user transverses the coverage areas of different satellites. The demonstration employed a remote terminal in Port St.

Lucie, U.S., and a gateway in Lima, Peru, which connected to a software-defined Kratos OpenSpace® vStar hub system located more than 3,000 miles away in Virginia, U.S., all orchestrated and conducted over SES?s O3b satellite network. Military satellite communications (MILSATCOM) networks increasingly will need to support multiple missions and employ multi-orbit satellite networks while reacting far more quickly than hardware-based ground system. Kratos OpenSpace® Platform is the only commercially available, fully software-defined satellite ground system that provides the necessary reliability and agility needed for these modern operations.

System efficiency was further enhanced by hosting the container-based OpenSpace hub on public cloud resources provided by SES. Funding for this project was through the Network Cross-Functional Team (N-CFT) established by the Army Futures Command.