US Army Soldiers assigned to 1st Stryker Brigade Combat Team, 2nd Infantry Division use satellite communication systems during Decisive Action Rotation 20-05 at the National Training Center. (Army photo by Pfc. Rosio Najera, Operations Group, National Training Center)
AUSA 2023 — The Army award to Comtech of $48.6 million for a new multi-network satellite communications modem kicks open the door to potential sales of thousands of the software-based systems — replacing the current standard modem for transmitting and receiving SATCOM signals that equips not just Army ground systems, but also those of the Navy and Air Force, according to company and Army documents.
Further, Comtech President and CEO Ken Peterman told Breaking Defense that the contract for the Army’s Enterprise Digital Intermediate Frequency Multi-Carrier (EDIM) modem paves the way toward helping the Space Force in its struggle to figure out how to integrate ground systems for the myriad military and commercial SATCOM networks to ensure 24/7, worldwide communications.
“Our winning the EDIM contract is an opportunity to not just ultimately replace all of those incumbent, now aging modem capabilities, but also provide a framework wherein this modem can lean forward and realize the Space Force’s enterprise vision where individual defense users can roam in and among both military as well as commercial networks in a kind of a blended space architecture,” he said.
The initial contract, announced by the company on Oct. 3, covers five and half years for “design, development, testing, documentation, fabrication, and delivery of production units, hardware and software sustainment, including Information Assurance (IA) and performance capability enhancements” of the new EDIM modem, according to the Army’s solicitation to industry for the program.
The solicitation also makes clear work could span far beyond just the Army. EDIM, the solicitation said, will be “a replacement to the aging Enhanced Bandwidth Efficient Modem (EBEM) currently supporting Tri-services Satellite Communication (SATCOM) users. The EDIM Modem supports the gradual migration of SATCOM terminals and baseband equipment to a digital Intermediate Frequency (IF) architecture. The EDIM Modem will be employed as the DoD’s SATCOM modem by the Army and other Services and Agencies.”
Peterman said that there were “around 40,000” of the EBEM modems built by Viasat (incidentally Peterman’s former employer) and in use since 2003.
“And, of course, connectivity is more important now than ever before,” he added. “So, frankly, as a business person, my expectation is that that we will be in those kinds of production quantities, which would make this of significant and long-term … value for ourselves and our shareholders. And it creates long-term value for the Army and the DoD customers too.”
Not only is the new Comtech EDIM modem smaller — “an eight to one” size reduction — than the current model, but also adds “new capabilities” and “new waveforms,” which include a new “integrated interference excision capability so it can operate in the presence of a congested RF environment.”
Interference excision essentially means the modem is designed to screen out random noise and jamming signals to clear up access to the desired SATCOM signal.
But most importantly, Peterman said, the EDIM modem has been designed to support the Army’s future digital ground architecture because it is provides interoperability with the Army’s “digital Intermediate Frequency” standard — meaning that “the interfaces to the modem are standardized against” the Army’s standard “so it can interface to a wide variety of different radios made by different vendors.”
Avoiding vendor lock also has been on the mind of the Space Force as it moves forward with plans for its so-called “hybrid architecture” and the use of commercial SATCOM services, because of the tendency of SATCOM providers to use their own modems based on widely different communications standards.
“You’re seeing LEO [low Earth orbit] providers vertically integrate and provide their own waveform as a part of their own stovepipe ecosystems. You’re seeing geosynchronous satellite providers … doing the same thing,” Peterman said. “And therein lies the challenge to the Space Force.”
At the same time, he said, SATCOM providers are already under pressure from users, both civil and military, who “don’t want to choose” between providers in different orbital regimes, but instead, “want to roam in and among all of those various networks” and among different vendors in the same manner cellphone users already can.
This means, Peterman predicted, that SATCOM service providers ultimately “will move toward open standards, they will move toward the most common and open interface standards” simply because of customer demand.
