Wideband Global SATCOM

The Wideband Global SATCOM system (WGS) is a high capacity United States Space Force satellite communications system planned for use in partnership by the United States Department of Defense (DoD), Canadian Department of National Defence (DND) and the Australian Department of Defence. The system is composed of the Space Segment satellites, the Terminal Segment users and the Control Segment operators.

DoD wideband satellite communication services are currently provided by a combination of the existing Defense Satellite Communications System (DSCS) and Global Broadcast Service (GBS) satellites. According to United Launch Alliance, quoted on Spaceflight Now, "A single WGS spacecraft has as much bandwidth as the entire existing DSCS constellation." WGS operations are currently run by the 4th Space Operations Squadron, out of Schriever Space Force Base, as well as the 53rd Space Operations Squadron.

The constellation of WGS satellites increases the communications capabilities of the militaries of the United States, Canada, and Australia by providing additional bandwidth and communications capabilities for tactical command and control, communications, and computers; intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (C4ISR); battle management; and combat support information. Canada has also signed on to become a partner.

WGS also augments the current Ka-band Global Broadcast Service (on UHF F/O satellites) by providing additional information broadcast capabilities as well as providing new two-way capability on that band. It provides services to the US DoD and Australian Department of Defence. The IWS System supports continuous 24-hour-per-day wideband satellite services to tactical users and some fixed infrastructure users. Limited protected services will be provided under conditions of stress to selected users employing terrestrial modems capable of providing protection against jamming.

The WGS satellites will complement the DSCS III Service Life Enhancement Program (SLEP) and GBS payloads and will offset the eventual decline in DSCS III capability. WGS will offer 4.875 GHz of instantaneous switchable bandwidth, thus each WGS can supply more than 10 times the capacity of a DSCS III Service Life Enhancement Program (SLEP) satellite. Once the full constellation of 6 WGS satellites is operational, they will replace the DSCS system. WGS-1 with its 2.4 Gbit/s wideband capacity, provided greater capability and bandwidth than all the DSCS satellites combined.

Operation and usage of the system is broken into 3 segments.

The end users of the communication services provided by the WGS are described by the DoD as the terminal segment. Users include the Australian Defence Force and U.S. Army ground mobile terminals, U.S. Navy ships and submarines, national command authorities for the nuclear forces, and various national security/allied national forces. Additionally, the Satellite Control Network will also use the WGS in a similar manner as the DSCS III constellation is used to route ATM packets through the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) "cloud" to establish command and control streams with various satellite constellations. One of the emerging applications is SATCOM-ON-The-Move which is now being extensively used on the military tactical vehicles for Blue Force Tracking and C3 missions.

The satellite operators in charge of commanding and monitoring the satellite's bus and payload systems as well as managing the network operating over the satellite are the control segment. Like the DSCS constellation that WGS will replace, spacecraft bus is commanded by the 4th Space Operations Squadron of Schriever Space Force Base, Colorado. Payload commanding and network control is handled by the Army 53rd Signal Battalion headquartered at nearby Peterson Space Force Base, Colorado with subordinate elements A Company at Fort Detrick, Maryland, B Company at Fort Meade, Maryland, C Company at Landstuhl, Germany, D Company at Wahiawa, Hawaii, and E Company at Fort Buckner, Okinawa, Japan.