Military X and Ka-bands media mix analysis for the wideband gapfiller satellite system

Achieving the goals of Joint Vision 21 will require large amounts of communications capacity delivered to the warfighter in a timely fashion. The wideband segment of the military satellite communications architecture is one of the prime broadband mechanisms for delivering high capacity to the warfighter by using state-of-the-art commercial technology. Today´s commercial satellite technology can provide significant downlink power to tactical users. However, the real challenge is in providing bandwidth to tactical users. Therefore, both the military X and Ka bands will be necessary to accomplish the bandwidth needs. Associated with the use of these bands is the dilemma of which users should stay at X-band and which should transition to Ka-band. During 1999, DISA was tasked by the Global Information Grid Senior Steering Group (GIG-SSG) to examine use of the military X- and Ka-bands for the wideband segment of the MILSATCOM architecture and, specifically for the Gapfiller satellite, make recommendations on the assignment of users to the these bands. This paper discusses the recommendations that were approved by the GIG-SSG