Two competing prototype payloads, developed by Northrop Grumman and Boeing and both set to launch in 2025, aim to open a new era of secure, jam-resistant tactical communications.
Northrop has finished assembly and testing of its payload for the Protected Tactical SATCOM-Prototype (PTS-P) program and is now working on integrating the system onto one of its ESPAStar buses, the company said Jan. 6. Boeing is in the advanced stages of integrating its PTS-P payload with its new Wideband Global SATCOM satellite, WGS-11, a spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine.
The Space Force has sought more secure communications solutions for several years and sought to ramp up the effort in its fiscal 2025 budget request. PTS-P seeks to develop a secure communications system impervious to adversary jamming. The prototypes will employ new cryptography, signals, and more. How the variants perform will influence how USSF proceeds with a program projected to cost some $2 billion over the next five years, according to budget documents.
The intensity of electronic warfare jamming in the Russia-Ukraine war has highlighted the need for jam-resistant satellite signals, but the Space Force program dates back even further. USSF’s Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellites provide jam-resistant tactical and strategic comms today, but the Space Force plans to split its tactical and strategic requirements in the future.
Evolved Strategic SATCOM for nuclear command and control and other strategic missions will handle one set of signals, while USSF’s Protected Anti-Jam Tactical SATCOM (PATS) family of systems, includes PTS-P and the Protected Tactical Waveform and ground infrastructure, called the Protected Tactical Enterprise Service, will support tactical requirements.
Both Northrop Grumman and Boeing passed a preliminary design review for PTS-P in 2020, and the Space Force awarded prototype contracts in 2021. Northrop’s version passed its critical design review in September 2021, and will be a “free flyer” with its own dedicated satellite, an ESPAStarHP bus. Boeing’s version completed its critical design review in 2022, with the decision made then to host it on the WGS-11 satellite. (Sharing payloads is one way of the Space Force is holding down costs, as with the Enhanced Polar SATCOM-Recapitalization payloads, which are hosted on a Norwegian satellite launched in 2024.
Boeing’s PTS-P payload will supplement WGS-11’s main mission. The WGS constellation provides high-bandwidth global communications coverage, which lacks advanced anti-jamming capabilities. Congress funded the newest WGS satellites, the 11th and 12th in the series, in 2018. Boeing and Space Force officials say the newest iteration will be able to direct its signals in a narrower beam, making it harder to spoof or jam its signals.
A Boeing spokesperson told Air & Space Forces Magazine that PTS-P will be able to demonstrate its prototype technology even as the rest of the WGS satellite operates, then transition to become fully operational after the demonstration if needed.
The Space Force has split the PTS program into two phases: PTS-Prototype and PTS-Resilient. Even as Northrop and Boeing are working on PTS-P, they are competing for PTS-R, which will operationalize the technologies demonstrated in the prototypes. The plan is to create two payloads “with full signal processing and switching capability that allows direct connectivity between users,” and that can either orbit on their own dedicated satellites or be hosted on other spacecraft.
On top of that, the Space Force is also working on what it calls PTS-Global, which “bridges the gap between the more focused capabilities provided by PTS-R and the broadly available but also the lower assured access capabilities provided by existing/emerging MILSATCOM and commercial services,” according to budget documents.
The Space Force is seeking nearly $250 million to get started on PTS-Global in the fiscal 2025 budget, which has yet to gain final approval. That budget would also fund PTS-Resilient for source selection this year, with the goal of launching satellites in fiscal 2029 at a total cost of some $2.14 billion over five years.