A PRECURSOR TO THE US Department of Defense's planned global broadcast system (GBS) has been deployed in Europe for the distribution of classified video-imagery collected by General Atomics Predator unmanned air vehicles (UAVs) operating over Bosnia.
Hughes Space & Communications, meanwhile, has received a $150 million contract to modify three US Navy UHF follow-on communications satellites, to provide an interim GBS capability. The satellites, are the last of ten HS-601 spacecraft ordered in 1988, under a $1.9 billion contract.
At the urgent request of the US Defense Airborne Reconnaissance Office, the US Air Force has modified an experimental system to transmit video from the Predator UAV ground station, via commercial Ku-band satellite, to sites throughout Europe equipped with very-small-aperture terminals.
Three Predators are being used on 12-16h flights over Bosnia, carrying a Northrop Grumman (formerly Westinghouse) synthetic- aperture radar able to produce 0.3m-resolution ground images from 26,000ft (8,000m).
The GBS is a military equivalent to the DirectTV broadcast television service. To provide an interim GBS capability until dedicated spacecraft can be produced, Hughes will replace the super-high-frequency payload on each of the remaining UHF follow-on satellites with four Ka-band transponders and three steerable spot-beam antennae capable of transmitting to small, mobile, tactical terminals.
Source: Flight International