Page 53 - Australian Defence Magazine April 2020

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and the US - other international partners are Canada, Denmark, Luxembourg, The Netherlands and NZ, which contributed to the cost of WGS-9.
Each WGS satellite delivers the same capacity as the entire legacy 14 satellite DSCS network, which is a lot. The US Air Force considered the WGS constellation complete with WGS-10 and sought no more but it’s getting them anyway.
In 2018 the US Congress inserted US$605 million funding for WGS-11 and WGS-12 into the US defence budget, with the contract with Boeing for WGS-11 an- nounced last April. You’ve got to love the US procurement system.
“FIGURES FOR ACTUAL FUEL RESERVES IN AUSTRALIA VARY BUT AT BEST ARE WELL UNDER HALF THAT STIPULATED BY THE IEA.”
WHEN PUSH COMES TO SHOVE
In time of crisis, it would surely follow that demand for WGS would soar from all partners and the US, which after all footed most of the very substantial cost, would maximise its usage. Would that be at the expense of the partners? Maybe it would.
There’s another problem. Any adversary knows full well our reliance on space deliv- ered capability and the opening moments of the next big one could be marked by complete loss or degradation of SATCOM and space based surveillance.
That goes both ways – an adversary couldn’t expect to have its own assets left unscathed.
The ADF is well aware of this and various projects are under way, such as JP9102 to improve SATCOM resilience and JP9101, to enhance the legacy defence high fre- quency (HF) communications system.
In a wholly satellite denied operating environment, the ADF would have to rely on HF for long distance communications, pending reconstitution of lost capability.
In the short term that might be down to us alone, by way of a domestic launch capa- bility to speedily loft replacement satellites, which could be small cubesats. Such a ca- pability isn’t that far off. ■
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