{"id":78673,"date":"2014-01-28T17:55:11","date_gmt":"2014-01-28T09:55:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/revisited-advice-how-the-ndaa-stacks-up-to-industry-input\/"},"modified":"2014-01-28T17:55:11","modified_gmt":"2014-01-28T09:55:11","slug":"revisited-advice-how-the-ndaa-stacks-up-to-industry-input","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/revisited-advice-how-the-ndaa-stacks-up-to-industry-input\/","title":{"rendered":"Revisited Advice: How the NDAA Stacks Up to Industry Input"},"content":{"rendered":"<\/p>\n

In January 2013, five companies \u2014 Eutelsat America<\/b>, Intelsat General<\/b>, Telesat<\/b>, XTAR<\/b> and SES Government Solutions (SES-GS)<\/b> \u2014 submitted a white paper to the United States Department of Defense (DoD)<\/b> titled \u201cSeven Ways to Make the DoD a Better Buyer of Commercial Satcom.\u201d The paper outlined goals for the DoD to acquire commercial satellite communication (comsatcom) in a way that would save the government money and the industry time. A year later, the 2014 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) was approved with comments that addressed comsatcom. The bill has received praise for some sections, but how does it compare to what the industry has said needs to be done?<\/p>\n

The very first point of the \u201dSeven Ways\u201d paper called for the government to establish a baseline of how much comsatcom it needs. The government uses an amalgam of military and commercial satcom systems to meet its needs. Has the DoD planned out what percentage of comsatcom it will budget and contract?<\/p>\n

\u201cIt hasn\u2019t,\u201d Nicole Robinson, corporate VP of government affairs and communications at SES-SG, told Via Satellite<\/i>. \u201cThat\u2019s probably one of the most crucial elements of the \u2018Seven Ways\u2019 paper \u2014 creating a baseline of requirements that they need on a global basis would make a foundation on which you can structure architecture. We are doing that on an ad-hoc means now where we are constructing military satcom systems, both for communication, sensing and other technologies, and then we are expecting commercial satcom, through leasing on the spot market, to fill some of the gaps that those systems aren\u2019t providing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other points were largely missed as well. According to Robinson, the bill did not create an accurate cost comparison of military versus commercial satcom, lay out an architecture that fully integrates commercial and military capabilities, or establish a single office to handle military and commercial satellite capabilities. Many of the issues mentioned in the paper were, at best, only partly addressed in the new bill.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t want anyone to interpret my comments to say, \u2018Congress hasn\u2019t heard what we\u2019ve been saying,\u2019 [because] they have,\u201d said Robinson. \u201cWe\u2019ve crafted a strategy toward finding a way of accomplishing many of these \u2018seven ways,\u2019 but nothing definitive has taken place.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two major highlights from the NDAA 2014 bill were language that directed the DoD to study the feasibility of multi-year procurements and hosted payloads as cost saving opportunities.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it is a realization that all the efforts the industry has been putting forward for the past few years to offer lower cost solutions, which can still meet government needs, have finally been heard,\u201d said Claude Rousseau, senior analyst at NSR<\/b>.<\/p>\n

What prompted the government to finally look into these commercial options that the satellite industry has suggested for several years? Rousseau puts the blame squarely on one catalyst: budget.<\/p>\n

\u201cHad there not been sequestration or all these problems with budgets, I don\u2019t think this would have been enacted,\u201d he said. \u201cIf the intent is to really cut down on the acquisition of spot market prices that can sometimes be up to 25, 30 or even 40 percent more \u2026 then that is good news for the taxpayer.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\"SES
Nicole Robinson, corporate VP of government affairs and communications at SES-GS. Photo: SES-GS<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n

The DoD may also be warming up to the white paper\u2019s suggestion to make a single office for satellite capacity needs. Different offices commonly handle milsatcom, which makes comparing costs and integrating infrastructure a more difficult task.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn our engagements with staffers and members over the past year, my indications are that there is acknowledgement that there would be value and benefit to having a single program office to have one global view of satellite communications architecture,\u201d said Robinson. \u201cWe\u2019re just not there yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Futron<\/b> director of strategy and consulting Sima Fishman agrees that the DoD is taking the white paper\u2019s suggestions seriously. \u201cWhen the major players of this industry set aside competitive rivalries to help educate their customer, they give a clear signal that something is broken in the process,\u201d she said. \u201cIt is hard for government to disregard such a primer on the basics of doing business in the commercial world.\u201d<\/p>\n

A single office for satcom could set the stage for meeting the paper\u2019s other points, such as streamlining the process for comparing procurement strategies. Having multiple procurement authorities creates dissimilar views on how to meet the DoD\u2019s needs. A lot of the operational costs for things such as personnel, infrastructure and daily operations remain unknown. This makes an understanding of global capability difficult, and a cost study done by industry would come with an obvious conflict of interest. Robinson suggested it would be in the government\u2019s interest to conduct its own study.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor those of us on the commercial side, those are absolute costs,\u201d said Robinson. \u201cWe live and breathe by them because they determine how profitable we are. And this isn\u2019t just SES, it\u2019s all of the commercial operators. We know down to the cent how much it costs to launch and operate every one of our satellites. It\u2019s difficult to do a cost comparison between a military satellite asset and a commercial satellite asset when all of the true costs behind each are not readily known. If you had Congress encourage the U.S. Government Accountability Office<\/strong> (GAO) to do an exploration on the costs of milsatcom versus comsatcom, then you would have an outside perspective looking at it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cA better question [than if the DoD knows its comsatcom needs] might be does the DoD have a solid understanding of how much comsatcom it actually has?\u201d said Fishman. \u201cOr how that capacity is utilized? Or what the vendor community can offer? Because the answers to these questions seems to be no, it is hard to imagine DoD has an accurate vision of its actual purchasing needs for minimizing cost.\u201d<\/p>\n

While the NDAA 2014 does have many steps forward, which are worth celebrating, it will take more time before the DoD implements more of the advice it received from commercial partners. According to Robinson, approximately 80 percent of military communications rides on commercial satellites. comsatcom plays an integral role in the government\u2019s military strategy, and the industry recognizes government as an important partner.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven if you disagree with 80 percent, there is universal agreement that most of the satcom the DoD uses today is commercial,\u201d said Robinson. \u201cWe\u2019re pushing on an open door. Congress understands, and I think the staffers understand. It\u2019s just not an overnight process. We need the active language in the FY2015 bill that grants DoD the authority to do things differently.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In January 2013, five companies \u2014 Eutelsat America, Intelsat General, Telesat, XTAR and SES Government Solutions (SES-GS) \u2014 submitted a white paper to the United States Department of Defense (DoD) titled \u201cSeven Ways to Make the DoD a Better Buyer of Commercial Satcom.\u201d The paper outlined goals for the DoD to acquire commercial satellite communication […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":78674,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-78673","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78673"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78673"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78673\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78673"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78673"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78673"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}