Launch delay for Australia's WGS 6

US Air Force Space Command announced last week that the fifth Wideband Global SATCOM satellite's launch will not occur in January as planned, a ripple effect of the Air Force's ongoing analysis of what went wrong during an early October launch of a GPS satellite in Florida, which is functioning properly and undamaged during the launch.

To give time for the study without putting other payloads at risk, the Air Force has opted to delay planned launches of the X-37B spaceplane (OTV-3) until late November, plus a NASA mission in January.

The WGS-5 launch, also scheduled for January, will be pushed back. WGS-5 is slated to use the same RL10B-2 motor that malfunctioned in October.

Air Force Space Command spokeswoman Jennifer Green-Lanchoney said that missions after WGS-5 are under review at this time pending the results of the investigation.

The next WGS 6 was ordered in 2007 by Australia, which will get access to the WGS system in return—Gabe Starosta/Inside Defense

… but WGS has friends – INMARSAT!

With a continuously growing need for deployable bandwidth to support Network Centric Warfare in 21st century Australia, the DMO is running multiple projects to deliver WGS or Wideband Global Satellite capability to the ADF.

However, the increasing need for bandwidth is also being felt by coalition partners in other key militaries such as the UK and Canada, as well as by WGS’s owners, the US DoD.

As the total WGS bandwidth available is finite, military communications operators will almost certainly need to supplement this capacity through the deployment of satellite terminals with multiple auxiliary RF kits.

These kits allow military satcom terminals to access services such as commercial Ku band in order to meet their operational bandwidth requirements.

According to presenters Todd McDonell and Peter Hadinger at last week's MilCIS conference Inmarsat’s upcoming Global Express service will revolutionise the satellite communications experience for the military user by providing commercial satcom bandwidth through new bands, such as Ka, which are already in use by the military.

They say that this coming together of commercial and military satellite communications capability offers some significant advantages to the military satcom user including through access to new commercial satellite services that provide similar, or in some cases more advanced, capability in more commercially attractive ways than currently offered to the military by today’s commercial satellite payloads.

Complementing the WGS capability, three Inmarsat-5 GX geostationary satellites are slated for launches in 2013 and 2014 providing commercial/military Ka services, with an initial operating capability over the Indian Ocean in 2013 and full operational capability over the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans by 2014.