Governmental Oversight Possible Barrier to Effective Hosted Payloads, Say Panelists

Successful government partnerships with commercial satellite operators for hosted payloads will require the government to step back and let the commercial processes move forward effectively, said CEO Tip Osterhaler of SES World Skies Government Solutions. Governmental oversight procedures can slow the efficiency, he told the Satcon conference in New York. For example, the Wideband Global SATCOM system, which is being built by Boeing, has allowed around 500 government employees access at the facility, Osterhaler said. “That’s a lot of oversight."

The Defense Department has long operated on a “big bang” schedule where improvements are long in between but offer huge additions in capacity and capabilities, said Col. Charles Cynamon, U.S. Air Force commander of the MilSatCom Network Integration Group. Commercial satellite operators should be encouraged by the current direction of things as Defense Department increasingly shows an understanding it doesn’t need to “own everything” and future operations will require a “mix of systems,” he said. Hosted payloads will “figure prominently” in future operations toward more-efficient satellite communications, he said. “Lease to buy” satellite communications use and encouraging the launch of military spectrum are other methods being considered to smooth the process, he said.

Operators can avoid onerous oversight by spelling out that the commercial operators are responsible for deciding when to move forward from milestone to milestone, Osterhaler said. Intelsat was able to keep oversight at minimum when dealing with the Australian government, which has an ultra-high frequency hosted payload flying on the Intelsat-22 satellite, through contractual stipulations, said Vice President Don Brown of Intelsat General.

Strict adherence to timelines is another necessity for a successful hosted payload program, Brown said. If the secondary payload isn’t ready by the time the primary payload is ready to launch, it’s unlikely the operator will wait, Osterhaler said. Particularly if the primary payload is replacement capacity, too many customers are depending on the capacity to wait for the secondary payload and missed rides to space equals missed opportunities, he said. There are financial differences in the partnerships since the commercial business is run by bankers while government interests use taxpayer funds.

More capability-focused requests by the government, rather than a focus on the production of dedicated satellites, also adds to successful partnerships, said Brown. The Australian government said it needed a certain number of UHF channels by 2012, something Intelsat was able to accommodate through a hosted payload, he said. More stability is also needed, he said. Governmental requests for satellite communications sometimes change as a program moves forward, slowing the process, said Brown. Governmental and commercial satellite acquisition cycles are also out of sync, he said.