The SPARTAN system is the first phased‑array‑fed parabolic antenna of its kind deployed in an operational environment to support satellite commanding, telemetry, and mission data collection. The 6-meter full-motion parabolic dish incorporates a phased-array feed that enables eight electronically steerable downlink beams and a dedicated uplink beam, allowing simultaneous support for multiple spacecraft.

“This is a significant capability jump for OrbitXchange and for our customers offering greater operational capabilities with a single, affordable antenna,” said Ed Baron, senior vice president of Parsons’ Space Engineering Solutions. “SPARTAN delivers the performance of a traditional parabolic antenna at a competitive price point, but with the added advantage of commanding and controlling multiple satellites at once an expanded capability not available on standard ground antennas. Its flexible design allows operators to retrofit legacy antennas, scale to larger apertures for missions extending to cislunar space, or chain multiple units together to provide continuous coverage across the geosynchronous belt.”

Designed to meet the demanding requirements of national security space missions, the initial SPARTAN installation added to Parsons OrbitXchange provides the largest Unified S‑Band and Space Ground Link System (SGLS) commercial capability currently available for U.S. government customers. The system-design can also be tailored to additional frequency bands to meet emerging mission needs. SPARTAN is equipped with the Parsons Mission Link Modem (MLM), a software-defined radio that delivers flexible signal processing and supports a wide range of mission sets, waveforms, and data rates.

Baron added that Raven Defense customized the antenna for satellite commanding and telemetry operations directly from its production line. “We look forward to expanding our partnership with Raven Defense and deploying additional SPARTAN systems to meet the accelerating needs of our government and commercial customers,” he said.

Source: Parsons

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“Receiving this award reflects our success to date in the advancement of this technology and our continued commitment to work alongside the government and deliver assured data access to the Warfighter in a timely fashion,” said Dr. Dan Moran, vice president and general manager of Cubic Secure Communications. “Halo will deliver compact, power-efficient, and resilient satellite connectivity to meet critical mission needs in multiple domains.”

Halo is a software-defined antenna system for hybrid SATCOM operations. It supports simultaneous transmission and reception in Multiple bands, enabling high-throughput, multi-beam communications. Designed for resilience, Halo maintains redundant network paths and connects seamlessly across multiple constellations. Halo enables end-users to have a single device that can securely leverage SATCOM services from multiple commercial and government satellite providers.

Built on open standards and optimized for ultra-low size, weight, and power (SWaP), Halo is scalable across many platforms and missions. The system features a flat-panel active electronically scanned array (AESA) with 2D beam steering, delivering robust and flexible connectivity for modern defense operations.

Source: Cubic

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NGA posted the CASPER-A RFI to the classified Intelligence Community Acquisition Research Center (ARC) website at https://acq-ui.ace.proj.nro.ic.gov on 23 July 2024.  The scope of CASPER-A involves Radio Frequency Antenna capabilities.  The objective of the RFI is to identify sources capable of performing the required services and to seek comments from industry on the Draft Statement of Work (SOW).  Responses to the RFI are due no later than 5:00PM Eastern on 23 August 2024.

Interested parties must have a classified ARC account to access the classified ARC website.  To obtain a classified ARC account, interested parties must add their classified email address to their profile in the unclassified ARC website and within 24-48 hours, the classified ARC account will be active.

Review the NGA CASPER-A RFI.

Source: SAM

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The agreement aligns with L3Harris’ portfolio-shaping strategy for non-core assets, with transaction proceeds to be used consistent with capital allocation plans. The transaction is made up of $175 million of cash at closing and a $25 million seller note.

The businesses L3Harris will divest offer a variety of airborne and ground-based antennas and test equipment. They are part of the Space & Airborne Systems segment and employ approximately 375 people.

Source: L3Harris

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The OpenEdge 2500 enables digitization to occur natively within nearly any parabolic, electronically steerable, or flat panel antenna. Today, when digitization is done at all, it occurs within a separate, added network component located either at the gateway, at the remote user terminal or somewhere in between. For both accuracy and transport efficiency, however, it is best to digitize as close to the signal’s origin as possible, and there is no place closer than within the antenna itself.

Cobham Satcom, a global industry leader in the design and manufacture of accurate, multi-orbit, active tracking antennas for land, maritime, fixed and mobile applications across GEO, HEO, MEO and LEO satellites, will be the first to integrate the OpenEdge 2500 into its Comms on the Pause (COTP) satcom Tactical Terminals as well as other parabolic and flat panel electronically steerable antenna (ESA) terminals for both maritime and land applications. Cobham Satcom has considerable prior experience in the development and integration of digitization in its product lines and is an ideal partner to introduce the OpenEdge 2500.

The OpenEdge 2500 easily and effectively transforms traditional satellite antennas into digital ones, streamlining operations and allowing satellite service providers far more flexibility in configuring the best terminal solutions to meet their customers’ needs. Specifically, the availability of digital-ready antennas will provide network operators with an additional path for migrating to software-enabled (SE) terminals. SE terminals replace the purpose-built, proprietary equipment used at the network’s edge today with generic off-the-shelf compute, placing far more application power and security directly in the user’s hands. The OpenEdge 2500, like all Kratos OpenSpace® products, is based on industry standards, including the DIFI interoperability standard, enabling seamless integration with other standards-compliant devices and virtualized network functions from other vendors.

“Digitization offers much needed flexibility and opens up new ways to drive forward satellite communications,” said Bob Potter, TRACKER CTO at Cobham Satcom. “As one of the first antenna manufacturers to join the Digital IF Interoperability (DIFI) Consortium, we have long promoted standards-based digitization for the next generation of multi-orbit, multi-domain and multi-network terminals and gateways into the digital age. Adapting and optimizing the OpenEdge 2500 will allow us to deliver much desired digital-ready capabilities to both government and enterprise users, whether on COTP terminals deployed in the electronic battlefield, or to New Space and research organizations at the forefront of signal processing, virtualization, and cloud connectivity.”

Source: Kratos

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Shrinking the size of electronics is not possible without creating smaller and more powerful antennas. The Effective Quantitative Antenna Limits for Performance (EQuAL-P) program will revolutionize ESAs by reducing their size, increasing their data rates, strengthening their broadband signal transmission, and lowering their frequency of operations among other advancements.

“IC antenna engineers are constantly asked for better performance from ever-smaller devices, but they are up against the fundamental laws of physics,” said program manager Dr. Paul Kolb. “EQuAL-P seeks to resolve this, not by breaking these laws, but by rethinking the assumptions they are based upon and equipping engineers with new tools.”

Through a competitive Broad Agency Announcement, IARPA awarded EQuAL-P research contracts to address the full range of research objectives to the following teams:

• Boeing Research & Technology
• HRL Laboratories, LLC
• North Carolina State University
• The Pennsylvania State University
• Raytheon BBN Technologies
• SRI International
• University of Wisconsin–Madison
• The Regents of the University of California, Los Angeles

Test and evaluation work for the program will be performed by the Air Force Research Laboratory, the Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific, and the Naval Air Warfare Center Weapons Division.

Source: ODNI

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This production lot will be manufactured in Redwire’s recently expanded Longmont, Colorado facility, which utilizes modular array work cells that enable a factory capacity well in excess of 120 antennas.

“Redwire is proud to continue to develop critical, enabling antenna technology for our national security customer,” said Dean Bellamy, Redwire’s executive vice president of national security. “This antenna product line encompasses years of research and development of advanced antenna systems alongside industry and military customers. Redwire has already begun investing in the development of future mission critical antenna technologies for future phases of this constellation, as well as other Department of Defense and Intelligence Community missions.”

Redwire’s antenna technology delivers unmatched gain performance over an ultra-wide bandwidth. It interfaces to radios that support wideband frequency-hopping tactical networking, according to the company. The antenna technology was demonstrated in part under an Air Force Commercialization Readiness Program called AFWERX.

The award builds on years of development of advanced antenna systems for industry and military customers. Redwire’s antenna technology was selected for the original pathfinder mission to demonstrate this waveform from space.

Source: Redwire

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The post Redwire wins contract for national security LEO constellation antennas appeared first on Intelligence Community News.

“Delivering leading-edge technologies to support and protect our warfighters is of utmost priority to CAES,” said Mike Kahn, president and CEO, CAES. “For decades, CAES has worked closely with Lockheed Martin and the United States Navy and we are pleased to be their partner of choice once again on the AOEW system.”

Designed with decades of leading RF, antenna and military system expertise, CAES manufactures a full range of arrays for aerospace and defense applications. CAES’ Phased Array Antennas provide both a high sensitivity receive surveillance and an Electronic Attack (EA) transmit capability for AOEW AMP AN/ALQ-248 systems. They support the system’s ability to work independently or with the ship’s onboard electronic surveillance sensor, SEWIP Block 2 AN/SLQ-32(V)6, which also features CAES Antennas, to detect an incoming missile, evaluate where it is going, and then transmit countermeasure techniques to deter the missile.

Source: CAES

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Among the broader goals of the partnership are to advance the ability of ground systems to support, leverage, manage, and control electronically-steered and multi-purpose antennas to better support the capabilities of software-defined and multi-beam satellites. This effort will initially focus on joint development of a software-defined remote terminal that will support a variety of dynamic satellite connectivity applications, including support for multi-orbit use cases where connectivity to LEO, MEO, and GEO satellites through the same antenna are desirable.

The space industry is immersed in a renaissance, driven by technology breakthroughs such as small satellites, proliferated low Earth orbit (LEO) constellations, software-defined payloads, multi-orbit services, and more. On the ground, commensurate advances in satellite networks are occurring, as witnessed by the growth of ground-as-a-service providers, mobile communications-on-the-move, and virtualized ground systems. These advances at both ends of the space/ground connection mean that satellite systems must come to act more dynamically, adapting on-the-fly to changing needs, conditions, service levels, and business or mission requirements.

“Today’s modem/antenna interface assumes an analog, static, one-for-one relationship at a time when the space layer has evolved to include highly dynamic multi-orbit networks and software-defined payloads,” said Greg Quiggle, Vice President of Space Product Management at Kratos “Remote terminals must digitally transform, embracing the unique capabilities of electronically steered antennas (ESA) and universal customer premise equipment (uCPE) to dynamically enable multi-beam, multi-band, and multi-use at the network edge.”

The Digitally-Transformed Remote Terminal will combine a Kymeta ESA with a software-defined uCPE based on Kratos OpenSpace technology, all in a unified terminal package. The OpenSpace Platform is the first and only commercially available software-defined and orchestrated ground system that allows satellite and communications operators to advance the digital transformation of their satellite networks.

“Kymeta is excited to partner with Kratos, a leader in the space network virtualization revolution, to jointly develop a digital ground terminal that leverages the Kymeta u8 antenna technology,” said Lilac Muller, Kymeta’s Vice President of Product Management. “The Kymeta u8 is a software-defined platform that unlocks the potential of future capabilities in both terrestrial and space-based networks in geostationary and non-geostationary orbits.”

Source: Kratos

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“While still in the early development phase, quantum sensing relies on fundamentally different physics than conventional antennas. This may allow us to circumvent traditional aperture design limits for sensitivity and size,” said Julia MacDonough, product line director at BAE Systems. “As a result of these programs, BAE Systems’ FAST Labs will be at the forefront of quantum sensing to support the warfighter.”

A quantum approach to aperture development decouples the size of the antenna from the wavelength of the incoming signal. This can reduce the size and number of antennas on Department of Defense platforms.

Awarded earlier this year, the three quantum aperture-related contracts, which total $6.5 million, include work as a prime contractor on Quantum Apertures Technical Area 2 and teaming with ColdQuanta in both Technical Area 1 of Quantum Apertures and the Science of Atomic Vapors for New Technologies (SAVaNT) program.

BAE Systems’ FAST LabsTM research and development organization will perform work on the program at its facility in Merrimack.

Source: BAE Systems

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