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Satellite broadband is Stryker MVP

Apr- 1-2005 » Filed Under: Stryker Vehicle

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BY Bob Brewin

A satellite communications system, which Army officials cobbled together from commercial components before the Army’s Stryker Brigade Combat Team departed for Iraq last fall, emerged as the brigade’s most valuable broadband tactical Internet asset, according to an Army study.

After an exercise last summer at Fort Irwin, Calif., Stryker leaders identified what the report from the Center for Army Lessons Learned (CALL) described as a data gap between the power of the brigade’s automated systems and the limited digital transmission systems fielded to battalions within the brigade.

The low data rate of the brigade’s Near Term Digital Radio technology caused this bottleneck, according to the report, because it “was incapable of transmitting the volume of digital traffic at an acceptable speed and with reliability to the battalions."

Members of the Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division worked last summer with officials at the Army Battle Command Lab in Fort Gordon, Ga., and the Program Executive Office for Command, Control and Communications Tactical to develop a satellite-based, high-speed network system for the brigade, the CALL study stated.

Within 90 days, the three organizations developed and fielded a broadband communications system, the Initial Ku Satellite System (IKSS) which has an aggregate throughput of 7 megabits/sec, according to the CALL report.


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