Boeing & Hughes Teams Demonstrate Critical PTES Ground-Based Anti-Jam SATCOM Capability
Hughes joined with Boeing and US Space Force (USSF) team members to demonstrate an anti-jam SATCOM capability for the Protected Tactical Enterprise Service (PTES) program. PTES, a critical segment of the USSF Protected Anti-Jam SATCOM program, provides ground-based Protected Tactical Waveform (PTW) processing, enabling secure operations and tactical communications over Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) satellites, commercial satellites and the Space Force’s new Protected Tactical Satellites. PTW, the U.S. military’s jam resistant waveform, provides security features for data protection. The Pentagon can use these military-grade protections to sustain secure, high-data-rate satellite communications in sensitive environments, Boeing says.
The Hughes Defense team has been developing mission management, system control, networking and ground hub capabilities for this project since 2018. The PTES program incorporates an Agile development approach featuring rapid iterations completed every two weeks along with partners collaborating in the cloud.
“With threats to critical communications networks on the rise around the world, DoD needs resilient satcom solutions to adapt to evolving landscapes and bring security measures to the network edge for both monitoring and rapid orchestration. At Hughes, we’re designing software to fortify terminals against localized jamming by enabling artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to automate and facilitate rapid switching among different modems, satellites and services,” said Dr. Rajeev Gopal, vice president and Hughes program manager for PTES.
These recent demonstrations showed the successful integration of PTES software with the user terminal; the interface between the PTW-enabled ground terminal and Boeing’s management system; and virtualized mission planning components for dynamic and automated configuration. In combination, Hughes software elements and sub-systems enable secure communication with the ground terminal to support tactical capabilities. Boeing showcased the encryption capabilities of PTES in a virtual environment during the demonstration.
Through incremental system demonstrations like these, Hughes and Boeing receive valuable feedback from USSF operators, accelerate the change process, and ensure that system advancements meet shifting military threats and requirements. PTES is just one example of how Hughes helps bring speed and advanced software capabilities to the DoD to increase the security and resilience of global military SATCOM – especially in contested environments.