U.S. Air Force Looks At European Space

Signal, Sep 2008 by Baddeley, Adam

One of McKinney's recent roles was to represent the United States-and specifically the Global Positioning System (GPS)-at the annual Munich Satellite Navigation Summit. This year's February event followed a crucial period for Europe's Galileo satellite navigation program. Although Galileo is now moving ahead and successfully launched its second demonstrator satellite Giove-B from the Baikonur Space Center, Kazakhstan, in April, it had to be rescued with public funding from EU finance ministers in November.

McKinney notes that the United States works with the Galileo program on an ongoing basis. "I was with the Defense Department negotiation team in 2003 when Galileo was finalizing its signal structure," he relates. "We wanted to make sure that the signal structure they chose was compatible and interoperable with GPS. Discussions over a period of months ensured that the signal gave them the best possible capability but, at the same time, was interoperable with our systems. Since then we have had excellent cooperation on Galileo to ensure that that relationship stays in place. There have been a number of different technical groups where we have had to refine the signal and further approve it from what our initial agreement was. That is all done at the technical level."

He relates that, at the Munich summit, those involved on the European side said they were quite pleased with the cooperation and how things had progressed. "On all sides it has worked out quite well," he offers.

However, technology transfer is not being discussed. "We each have our own individual interests and we each want to make sure what we do doesn't cause harm to each other's signals," the colonel elaborates. "We each watch out over what is occurring, but we don't go into details. We try to stay away from technology transfer. They have their experts, we have our experts, and in the end it all works out just fine."

The United States has been developing space usage models and assets that allies are utilizing and assisting in funding, most notably in satellite communications. In November 2002, three countries signed a memorandum of understanding with the United States to use the U.S. Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite system. Late last year, a more significant development occurred with an $816 million contract that was signed to launch a sixth Wideband Global Satellite Communications (WGS) satellite, funded by the Australian Defence Force's (ADF's) Joint Project 2008.

European nations have looked at this arrangement with interest, according to McKinney, but only as another approach to providing MILSATCOM capability. "I think each individual country's needs and requirements would dictate the solution," he offers. "Wideband, for example, is a nonsecure communication capability. Skynet, Sicral and Syracuse all have greater capabilities for [secure] military communications. [The Australian WGS example] is just another tool in the tool box in terms of how you can get broadband capability."