Five Pillars Of Boeing’s Strategy For Staying Ahead In National-Security Space

Boeing’s
BA
space business is complicated. Thousands of employees are deployed across national-security, civil, and commercial segments of the market. They don’t just build satellites, they develop space capsules, design ground nodes, and support the International Space Station. The company is half-owner of a major launch provider, and markets a range of commercial space services.

The most visible component of Boeing’s space portfolio is the work it does for NASA, especially the Space Launch System for returning astronauts to the Moon and the Starliner capsule for carrying crews and cargo to the International Space Station.

But most of the portfolio is focused elsewhere—on military spacecraft, intelligence missions and commercial “satcoms” (communications satellites). Much of that work is classified, and even the parts that are not tend to be arcane. This work is a central feature of the company’s business mix.

So if you think the Boeing story is only about “things with wings,” guess again. For all the talk in popular culture about new players in space, Boeing remains the nation’s most diversified space enterprise. Some companies build satellites but not payloads; others offer commercial systems but not military ones. Boeing (a contributor to my think tank) does it all.

This article is about how Boeing is positioning to lead in national-security space. That part of the business would be hard for outsiders to understand even if aircraft didn’t overshadow the company’s orbital activities, because so much of it is secret. The company never talks in public about its extensive classified work.

However, there is an ongoing debate about the future of the national-security space sector, and Boeing has become increasingly vocal about how it intends to address that segment of the market. Under the leadership of VP and General Manager Kay Sears, the company has enunciated a series of core principles that Sears bluntly states do not reflect “the Boeing of the past.”

Here are five pillars underpinning the Sears framework for shaping the future of national-security space.

Speed, resilience & integration. Sears begins by embracing the overarching goals for national-security space set forth by Frank Calvelli, the Pentagon’s top official for buying space systems. Calvelli spent most of his 35-year career at the National Reconnaissance Office and CIA, so he has an intimate understanding of how space fits into the broader national-security picture.

Calvelli, now Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition & Integration, identifies three principles that will guide the design of future orbital systems used by the military and intelligence communities. First, they must be developed and fielded much faster than in the past. Second, they must be resilient in the face of growing threats. And third, they must be integrated with U.S. capabilities in other warfighting domains such as the air and sea.

These imperatives lead Calvelli to favor less complex systems that exploit existing technology to reach the force sooner. That is a different structure of incentives than contractors worked within in the past, but Kay Sears is shifting the culture of Boeing Space to match her customer’s expectations. Her reforms echo the mantra of “faster-better-cheaper” that has become increasingly attainable in the age of digital engineering.

Diverse satellites in diverse orbits. The challenge for Sears is to devise orbital architectures that can meet the customer need for speed and survivability while getting the job done in an affordable way. In the critical area of missile detection and tracking—where the nation now must deal with maneuvering hypersonic weapons—Boeing has proposed a layered, networked architecture of satellites in low, medium and geosynchronous orbits that reconciles the need for resilience with high resolution and low latency.

The government has traditionally favored orbiting a handful of exquisite missile-warning satellites in GEO over the equator, supplemented by polar-orbiting satellites in elliptical orbits to cover gaps in GEO coverage. The Pentagon recently has moved to add more numerous, less costly spacecraft in low orbits to track dimmer targets.

The Boeing refinement on this emergent scheme is satellites in medium-earth orbits, meaning orbits between LEO
LEO
and GEO, where there is a much wider field of view than from low orbits, but better resolution and latency than in high orbits. The company’s Millennium Space subsidiary is challenging traditional ideas with low-cost satellites for MEO that can be deployed in any orbital regime.

Multifaceted survivability. Boeing disputes the notion that constellations can be more resilient simply because their satellites are smaller. “Smallsats” in low-earth orbit may be smaller and more numerous, but they are also more accessible to attackers. The company therefore favors a panoply of defensive measures to complement the resiliency of satellites in diverse orbits.

Among the measures it identifies are disaggregation of missions and payloads, diversification of spacecraft types, active protection of spacecraft such as counter-jamming techniques, proliferation of low-cost satellites, and various deceptive techniques to mask the location of spacecraft. These defensive techniques can be supplemented by offensive efforts in other warfighting domains, both kinetic and non-kinetic, that weaken the anti-satellite capabilities of adversaries.

Hybrid military-commercial architecture. Unlike most of its competitors in the satellite business, Boeing builds both national-security and commercial satellites. The business mix of its parent company is predominantly commercial. So, Boeing is positioned to benefit from the government’s efforts to augment military constellations with commercial systems.

The augmentation can be achieved not only by using commercial satellites and ground infrastructure under appropriate circumstances, but also by infusing military satellites with commercial technologies. For example, the latest version of Boeing’s Wideband Global Satcom satellites for high-capacity communications contains extensive commercial technology adapted from its 702X satcom design.

However, the company stresses that government planners must recognize the limitations of commercial satellites in a contested space environment because they lack many of the survivability features mandated by military standards. Jamming, signal interception, cyberattacks and other threats could compromise the availability of commercial satellites at the time when they are most needed. Boeing believes the government either needs to acknowledge the vulnerabilities of commercial systems in its plans, or provide incentives for industry to remedy the vulnerabilities.

Continuous adaptation. Finally, but perhaps most importantly, the Boeing framework for shaping the future of national-security space assumes there is no endpoint in adapting space assets to rising challenges. Space has become a dynamic, unpredictable warfighting environment. That is why a Space Force was created within the Department of the Air Force.

The one thing that probably won’t change is the nation’s dependence on orbital systems for its security and prosperity. So, the Space Force must be continuously alive to the possibility of new threats for which the military is not prepared. And companies like Boeing must be ready to change their own plans as new space requirements emerge. But Boeing emphasizes that when new needs are identified, the government’s guidance to industry as to what it requires must be clear and executable.

As noted above, Boeing contributes to my think tank.