Page 49 - Australian Defence Magazine November 2022

NOVEMBER 2022 | WWW.AUSTRALIANDEFENCE.COM.AU
SPACE 49
NORTHROP GRUMMAN AUSTRALIA
Northrop Grumman Australia’s (NGA) bid for JP 9102 includes: Inmarsat, responsible for co-delivering an Integrated Control Segment with NGA; L3Harris, which will provide a ground station capability including the Australian Wide Multi-Band Terminal (WMBT); AECOM, which will design Satellite Ground Stations and Satellite Operations Centres; Blacktree Technology, which will provide the High Mobility UHF ground segment to the offering; EM Solutions, providing certification services; and Vocus, responsible for fibre communication links.
“For us, there is 100 per cent focus on that partnering approach to bring a best of breed team together,” Ben Nankivell, NGA’s AIC and Operations Manager, explained. “That really is focused on providing resilient, end-to-end sovereign capability for the end user, for
that’s extendable? It’s a modular open-systems architecture – it’s agnostic to the systems integrated, and can scale and grow over time.
“From the lunar modules used in the Apollo missions to the James Webb telescope, NG has a huge heritage in space. That’s what we’ll contribute.”
OPTUS, RAYTHEON & THALES
These three companies are together leading a joint bid for JP9102 under Team AUSSAT, for which Optus is drawing on its experience flying the C1 satellite currently used by Defence, as well as six other satellites (including two for the National Broadband Network).
In a written response to ADM’s questions, an Optus spokesperson said they could not confirm the number of satellites they are offering for JP 9102, but that they will draw on ‘significant experience’ in Australian satellite
capabilities.
“Optus has a strong, longstanding
relationship with Defence on its Optus C1 spacecraft – which at the time of launch, was the largest ever commercial and military satellite – and we continue to operate C1 for Defence today after 20 years of reliable and continuous service. No other provider in Australia has designed, built, launched – and now operates – a geostationary Defence satellite in Australia for Australia,” the spokesperson said.
the joint force across all domains. 9102 orchestration that brings together a number of capabilities for Defence.”
“In this program we’re responsible for the ground segment – the user terminals, anchor stations and modems,” an L3 Harris spokesperson said. “The WMBT terminal is specifically designed for this program – it’s a wideband terminal with twice the through- put of existing terminals. It will be readily upgraded to track [satellites] for subsequent phases of the program. All these terminals will be sustained in Australia.”
is a complex
NGA, like the other bidders, says it
has provided the Commonwealth with
a number of options in regards to the refurbishment of existing ground station infrastructure or the development of new infrastructure.
“We’ve offered the Commonwealth a range of options and we’re maximising the re-use of infrastructure that they’ve made strong investments in, and we’re giving them the ability to scale that,” Nankivell said.
Ground infrastructure includes secure fibre optic communications, for which NGA has partnered with Vocus – which itself was recently taken private by two well-known Australian infrastructure investors, Macquarie Asset Management and Aware Super.
“We have the second-largest fibre optic cable network in Australia,” Michael Ackland, General Manager of Government and Special Projects for Vocus, said. “It’s also the most recent asset that’s many years younger than our rivals.”
Inmarsat, another member of the NGA team, has provided SATCOM to Defence for decades and is the second-largest satellite provider to the Royal Australian Navy.
“We bring the SATCOM element and the control system, the Operational Management Control System for the ADF’s use of commercial satellites, which we plan to interface with the NGA solution offered to the ADF [for 9102],” an Inmarsat spokesperson said.
“One of the things we tried to do early was find the right partners and think big enough about the problem,” Nankivell said. “This is a twenty-year investment. The question is, how do we build this with an architecture
The spokesperson also outlined the workshare amongst Team AUSSAT: Optus is the Prime Systems Integrator and owns the overall design, training, operations and sustainment, and control segment solution; Raytheon Australia will be managing the Ground Segment and delivering the SEIT, verification and validation, SATCOM certification and cross domain solution; Thales Australia will deliver training governance, simulation and cybersecurity; Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, supported by Mitsubishi Electric Australia, will deliver the military spacecraft; and PwC Australia will integrate to operate the
project management office. ■
“ONE CHALLENGE THIS PROGRAM HAS IS UNDERSTANDING THE EVER-EVOLVING ENVIRONMENT THAT WE’RE DEALING WITH IN SPACE”
NORTHROP GRUMMAN