Today, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) and critical infrastructure operators require reliable, resilient, high-performing 5G and SATCOM networks to meet warfighter and military infrastructure continuity demands and achieve mission success across the increasingly contested global battlefield domains. The EchoStar 5G team demonstrated these advanced, software-defined network capabilities at the U.S. Navy’s Whidbey Island Air Station (NASWI) and in Hawaii. The demonstrations have included next-generation orchestration software to optimize multi-transport military SATCOM network management, providing increased redundancy and diversity in network pathways, including at the network edge.
Network management is critical today
Hughes understands that soldiers and decision makers must have uninterrupted and always available connectivity, even in contested environments. To offset advancing global threats that can disrupt communications for these users, Hughes leverages advanced automation and software-defined networking techniques. Terminals using these techniques can autonomously select wide area connectivity and service based on policy rules assigned to various factors, such as mission priority, satellite availability, cost considerations, and active threats. Following recent demonstrations, Hughes is ready to implement this smart network orchestration for the U.S. DoD to ensure users have critical command and control information when they need it most, even in disrupted, disconnected, intermittent, and low-bandwidth conditions.
EchoStar demonstrates remote access to network management and resilient connectivity at the tactical edge
The EchoStar team successfully demonstrated our highly flexible and resilient mission planning capabilities that automatically switch communications paths to ensure uninterrupted access to situational awareness information.
The team’s powerful Network Management System (NMS) and Smart Network Edge (SNE) technologies dynamically planned and provided common operating pictures for situational awareness that supported Automated Primary Alternate Contingency Emergency (APACE) planning. This software-defined capability changed the communications path, Quality of Service (QoS), and various time/space-based resource commitments to speed up changes and access to the network’s SATCOM resources. The agile SNE technology switched from the primary 5G communications link to the alternate fiber link (based on the PACE plan provided by the NMS mission planning tool) when the network management system received an alarm about the primary link. The change in link from primary to alternate took less than 5 seconds. The NMS completed this task significantly quicker than the Navy’s typical manual switchover.
The Hughes smart orchestration technology processed new service requests with command-in-the-loop to accommodate new threats in the theatre, and then automatically distribute information to terminals managed by the Hughes Smart Network Edge. In addition, the SNE showed the U.S. Navy how to implement this key enabling technology that provides state-of-the-art resilient communications accessing multiple diverse transports, including GEO, MEO, LEO, and 5G systems.
RAN sharing for secure connectivity off Naval base
The Private 5G network maintained secure connectivity to applications while users moved off the Naval base. Through coordination with another private network designed by Hughes, located at another base in Hawaii, the RAN of the private network was shared with the NASWI 5G network. This capability supports a concept of operations where a device running on the Whidbey Island NAS 5G network can travel to another location and still access applications that reside at Whidbey Island. The Navy can use similar secure access to the internet from other 5G networks around the world to support air missions that require an aircraft operator to relocate from one base to another location while maintaining connectivity back to their private network and applications.
Summary
The U.S. Navy needs to have reliable, resilient communications at all times and in all domains, especially contested ones. To achieve this, Hughes worked with its Navy customer to successfully demonstrate dynamic, software-defined network orchestration at NAS Whidbey Island. Staying securely connected on base and off can be achieved to support mission success by optimizing multiple transports.