By Stephen Larsen

When Army officials dedicated the new Wideband Satellite Communications (SATCOM) Operations Center (WSOC) at the Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Wahiawa, Hawaii on Feb 23, they did more than open a facility – they christened the first of a new generation of satellite control facilities with not only much-needed space for expanding missions, but also with the modern wideband control systems required to fully utilize the expanded capacity of the military’s new Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) satellites.

“Today represents an important milestone in our command’s core task to provide trained and ready space and missile defense forces and capabilities to our combatant commanders and warfighters,” said Lt. Gen. Richard Formica, USASMDC/ARSTRAT commander, during the dedication of the facility. “We replaced the 1980s-era satellite control capability that we had at Camp Roberts, Calif. with this state-of-the-art $25.3 million facility here at Wahiawa.”

“Inside this center, and within the WSOCs around the world,” said Formica, “dedicated Soldiers, (government) civilians and contractors will coordinate and control the vast majority – in fact, virtually all – of the military’s wideband satellite communications capacity that’s used to support U.S. combat forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, our fleet forces afloat and Soldiers, sailors airmen and marines stationed around the world who work daily to defend our great nation.”

Formica added that within the Wahiawa WSOC, USASMDC/ARSTRAT operators would work alongside 11 Australian service members who will be integrated into their team, as part of a U.S.-Australian partnership in the WGS satellite program – something unique in WSOCs.

Because Hawaii is located in the middle of the Pacific region and is farther west than Camp Roberts, the Wahiawa WSOC has visibility to more Pacific region satellites.

“This enables the best support and coverage for PACOM (U. S. Pacific Command) theater wideband satellite communications requirements,” said Formica, who added that the Wahiawa WSOC is the designated test facility for payload control validation for future WGS launches.

Inside the WSOC

The new, 28,244 square-foot Wahiawa WSOC employs a standardized floor plan layout that allows not only sufficient space for satellite operations and equipment areas, but also for offices and training, conference, fitness and supply rooms and even rooms set aside to support future yet-undefined missions. The facility is nearly three times the size of the 9,600 square-foot WSOC at Camp Roberts that it replaced – which is greatly appreciated by the Soldiers of Delta Company of the 53rd Signal Battalion, 1st Space Brigade that staff and operate the facility 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

“It makes it easier for us to do our jobs,” said Staff Sgt. Michael Clifton, a 25S Satellite Communication Systems Operator/Maintainer at the Wahiawa WSOC. “It improves morale as well, because there’s more space and everything is clean and fresh with the latest advanced technology.”

“It’s an orders-of-magnitude difference,” said Steve Wikoff, the USASMDC/ARSTRAT Operations Analyst at the Wahiawa WSOC. “The operations floor at Roberts was pretty cramped, we couldn’t get any more equipment in there. Now, here at Wahiawa, we have plenty of space.”

The Naval Facilities Engineering Command (NAVFAC) Hawaii oversaw the construction of the Wahiawa WSOC, with USASMDC/ARSTRAT tasking three project management offices of the Army’s Program Executive Office, Enterprise Information Systems (PEO EIS) to provide the equipment and systems to enable it to operate.

PEO EIS’ Command Center Upgrades/Special Projects Office (CCU/SPO) served as the overall project integrators for the implementation of the effort. Ray Lorenzo, CCU/SPO project leader, said his biggest challenge was in sequencing of deliveries of equipment, furniture and other materiel from multiple project managers. “As much as possible, we sequenced it so that material shipped directly to the site and then staged in the proper area within the building, without having to be sent to a warehouse,” said Lorenzo.

Frank Grausso, lead systems engineer with CCU/SPO, said that installation of equipment, furniture and other materiel started on July 7, 2010, shortly after the construction of the building was completed and accepted by the Army. “After installation, the challenge was getting circuits error-free and ready to test,” said Grausso.

PEO EIS’ Defense Communications and Army Transmissions Systems (DCATS) Satellite Communications Systems (SCS) product office provided an AN/GSC-52 satellite terminal to serve as the WSOC’s auxiliary satellite control terminal (ASCT), provided baseband equipment and also linked the WSOC’s Interconnect Facility (ICF) to three nearby AN/FSC-78 satellite terminals and two nearby Ka-Stars (Ka-Band Satellite Transmit and Receive System) satellite terminals.

“It was a pretty compressed schedule to meet the IOC (Initial Operational Capability) date of December 23rd,” said Dwayne Cartagena, DCATS’ SCS product leader. To do so, Cartagena said that DCATS installed a satellite terminal that had been refurbished at Tobyhanna (Pa.) Army Depot as the ASCT at the Wahiawa WSOC while the Camp Roberts WSOC remained operational. “That way there was no loss in satellite coverage of the Pacific while we were installing the terminal at Wahiawa,” said Cartagena.

PEO EIS’ DCATS’ Wideband Control product office – with a team of Yui Lee as WSOC modernization project leader, Bill Westgate as configuration manager, Joseph Pellecchia, Amy Tetreault and Kenneth Murdock as Integrated Logistics Support managers and Derald Franklin, Sandy Ropel, Marvin Kass and Rustin Hafen as onsite project leaders – provided the wideband control systems at the Wahiawa WSOC. These systems included a patch and test facility; Common Network Planning Software (CNPS), which allows planning of links for maximum WGS satellite throughput; the Global Satellite Configuration Control Element (GSCCE), which sends payload commands to WGS satellites and gets telemetry information back; the Wideband Global Spectrum Monitoring Subsystem (WGSMS); the Replacement Frequency Modulated Orderwire (RFMOW), which provides a secure interface between the WSOC and tactical satellite terminals; the Replacement Radio Frequency Interface Subsystem (RRFIS), which does frequency conversion between the WSOC and satellite terminals; and the Wideband SATCOM Operations Management Subsystem (WSOMS), which provides a workstation allowing Soldier operators to access any wideband control system – whether it controls new WGS or legacy Defense Satellite Communications System (DSCS) satellites.

“It’s really smooth operating it, because the systems are already integrated together, you don’t have to try to piece it together,” said Clifton. “CNPS has more integration with other systems and is more automated. Our controllers like GSCCE because it’s very user friendly. That’s what’s great about this facility – everything’s tied together, we don’t have to do work-arounds. It makes our jobs a lot easier.”

Westgate, who designed the layout and supervised the installation of wideband control equipment racks and workstations, said his task was to devise a "logical order" for placing everything. “Certain systems had to talk to other systems, both red (unencrypted) and black (encrypted), so I had to locate them to facilitate that, “said Westgate. “One of the issues I wanted to avoid was the crowding of mis-located equipment racks that you find in the older WSOCs. We don’t have that here – we have enough space for all the racks, along with room to grow.”

“This was a comprehensive across-the-board team effort,” said David Morrissey, DCATS’ Acting Deputy Product Director, Wideband Control. “This is the first WSOC that we’ve (the USASMDC/ARSTRAT and DCATS team) stood up from scratch in nearly 20 years, the last one being the WSOC that we stood up at Ft. Buckner (Okinawa, Japan) in the early ’90s.”

Maximizing the capabilities of WGS satellites

Dan Hannan, USASMDC/ARSTRAT senior technical manager, said each WGS satellite has a throughput of approximately 4.75 GHz of bandwidth, equating to 2.1 to 2.5 gigabits/second (Gbps) of communications – which is about 10 times the bandwidth capacity of a DSCS satellite – enough capacity to transmit approximately three million web pages per second, 400 Predator video feeds per second or 0.5 high-resolution CT (computed tomography) medical scans per second.

“A single WGS satellite equals the bandwidth capacity of the entire 10-satellite DSCS constellation,” said Hannan. “We’ll be able to support many, many more warfighter missions with WGS compared to DSCS.”

Clifton agreed that the combination of WGS satellites and the new wideband control systems allow the operators at the Wahiawa WSOC to better support the warfighter.

“Our response time is a lot faster now,” said Clifton. “If warfighters call up with issues, our operators can pull things up and respond a lot faster.”

Col. Jeff Mockensturm, the Project Manager DCATS, was glad to hear that feedback, considering that controlling WGS satellites compared to DSCS satellites amounts to what he called “a geometric leap in terms of complexity of the mission for these satellite controllers.” For one thing, DSCS satellites transmit in only X-band, while WGS satellites transmit in both X-band and Ka-band – but it is more than that, Mockensturm said.

“The reason for all this new equipment and making it all work together more seamlessly is because the WGS satellite is so much more complex,” said Mockensturm. “WGS is not just a bigger pipe, but more pipes and the ability to switch between pipes on the bird, coming up on one frequency and going down on another. In the case of Ka band, we have dual simultaneous polarity – making two channels from one.”

That capability translates to a tangible benefit to warfighters on a battlefield, said Michael McGarvey, DCATS’ Product Director, Wideband Control.

“Thanks to WGS, ground forces who are using an X-band terminal or radio have the capability to communicate with other forces who are using a Ka-band terminal or radio,” said Michael McGarvey, DCATS’ Product Director, Wideband Control. “That means warfighters on a battlefield won’t have to wait in a queue for channels to open up.”

“That’s called ‘cross-banding,’” added David Morrissey, DCATS’ Acting Deputy Product Director, Wideband Control. “It provides the warfighter faster, readier access, and is a big deal in places that don’t have land line infrastructure, such as Afghanistan.”

Formica said that the layout of the Wahiawa WSOC will serve as a template for modernization of WSOCs at Ft. Detrick, Md., Ft. Meade, Md., and Landstuhl, Germany over the next three years. Meanwhile, DCATS’ Wideband Control product leaders will continue to provide more capabilities allowing operators to maximize the increased capabilities of WGS satellites.

Morrissey said that, as funding allows over the next few years, DCATS’ Wideband Control product office plans to provide additional wideband control systems, such as the Remote Monitoring and Control Element (RMCE), which will allow remote control of WGS satellite payloads and remote spectrum monitoring of satellite terminals not co-located at the WSOC; the Power Control Management Subsystem (PCMS), which will measure the quality of signal strength and automatically increase the power, as needed, when the signal is attenuated due to atmospheric conditions; the Joint Management and Operations Subsystem (JMOS), which will provide situational awareness of IP (internet protocol) over SATCOM for WGS; and the Wideband SATCOM Trend Analysis and Anomaly Resolution Subsystem (WSTARS), which will provide situational awareness of all networks over WGS.

“Our goal is to continue to provide USASMDC/ARSTRAT with the wideband control tools required to perform their payload configuration and control mission,” said McGarvey.

Formica expressed confidence that the team of Soldiers, civilians and contractors that operate the WSOCs and provide new capabilities will be equal to the task of “managing the satellite payloads and to provide critical communications, navigation and other space-based capabilities to our warfighters.”

“This is no small task, and our Soldiers and civilians take pride in their ability to maintain that lifeline that secure communications bring to those who are serving in harm’s way,” said Formica.”