Skynet 5 Military Defense System in the U.K. Nears Completion

By Richard Grigonis

Executive Editor, IP Communications Group

 

In the Terminator movies starring Arnold Schwarzenegger and Linda Hamilton, Skynet is a fanciful, intelligent, computer-based military defense system that becomes sentient, and turns on its human creators. Fortunately for the real world, Skynet has only appeared in video games and in the theme park attraction T2 3-D: Battle Across Time.

 

The United Kingdom, however, has its own Skynet, Skynet 5, which is quite real. It’s a next-generation military space communications network. The launch of the third and final satellite in the Skynet network — the five-ton Skynet 5C — was scheduled to take place in French Guiana recently but a software glitch onboard spurred technicians to stop the countdown a few hours prior to lift-off.

 

Skynet 5, a £3.6 billion project, consists of three satellites (5A, 5B and 5C) that will provide the British military with a secure, high-bandwidth capability covering everything from the Americas to Asia, through to the year 2020.

 

Unlike civilian communications satellites, Skynet is “hardened” and “ruggedized” for usage by the command-and-control-centers of the British Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air force, and resists attempts by enemies to jam its signals by sending precise point-to-point communications at a bandwidth 2.5 times greater than its predecessor, the Skynet 4 satellite network. Each spacecraft has four steerable antennas.

 

In expectation of the increased bandwidth made possible by the network of satellites, ground stations have been upgraded and new terminals and antennas have been appearing on British military planes, ships and land vehicles. One result of the higher bandwidth is that a new-generation of weapons — such as the Reaper unmanned aerial vehicles (drones) — is now in service over Afghanistan and controlled from the U.S. by RAF pilots.

 

Skynet 5 is a huge PFI (Private Finance Initiative), which means that the British government buys the capacity from a commercial supplier (Paradigm), which is allowed to sell any spare capacity to friendly governments. The money earned by Paradigm until the end of the contract in 2020 is expected to be enough for it to reinvest the money into larger and more sophisticated satellites.

 

Also, since deploying only two satellites was considered by many as being too risky, the system was made fault tolerant by adding a third satellite, Skynet 5C. It was felt that having a third satellite was better than simply buying insurance.