By Chris Forrester
Moderator: Preston Dunlap, CEO, Arkenstone Ventures asked panelists which orbit they favoured from the national security demand, and the importance of open standards and supply chain challenges. The panel, at the Smallsat Symposium in Mountain View reviewed the changes in warfare, the use of drones, and the adoption of security in these latest developments.
Karl Fuchs, SVP of Technology, iDirect Government, stated that neither LEO nor GEO was dead. “Resiliency is hugely important and the risk of losing an orbit from the national security point of view would not go away. Today, clients want a full solution in multi-orbit, with computers and radios and where at the functional level they can handle inter-operability for a micro-vertical integration.”
Assi Friedman, CTO, Innoflight, felt that LEO would remain important but non-LEO would stay relevant in order to provide a full set of solutions. “We work with multiple parties, using different vendors and use the same technology in LEO, MEO and GEO. Encryption and security is a major concern, and latency cannot be ignored. Go back a few years and all anyone worried about was space-to-ground communication. Now it is link-to-link before coming to ground.”
Jesper Noer, VP Commercial, Gatehouse Satcom told delegates that LEO was far from dead, and its latency was super-valuable. He praised Starlink for doing a great job – albeit capital intense – but where vertical integration worked. “In general, however, we see an open standards approach and which permits a horizontal integration and is very cost-effective and we see this being attractive to the U.S. Dept of Defense. He said as a foreign (Danish) supplier to the U.S. he needed local partners but he predicted that the Ukraine examples of using very cheap drones to take out armaments costing millions and would translate to other markets and used in defense markets.”
Christian Keil, VP, Astranis told delegates about their recent 4-satellite launch (on a SpaceX rocket) of their satellites. He argued that the more he could bring development in house then the faster it could be. “We can invest in suitable machinery and cut metal, and then not depend on suppliers where delays are inevitable. Some supply chains are in other parts of the world with all the risks that entails. There is no war taking place under our roof! With more control you can move faster, and be cheaper.”
