Rebecca Cowen-Hirsch: DoD Should Eye ‘SATCOM as a Service’ Model

Rebecca Cowen-Hirsch, a senior vice president at Inmarsat, has called on the U.S. government to reform how it acquires satellite communications technologies and move toward what she called a “SATCOM as a Service” setup.

Cowen-Hirsch, SVP of government strategy and policy for Inmarsat’s U.S. government segment, wrote in a SpaceNews op-ed published June 3 that such a model would see the military embed satellite terminals into services and expand frequencies on current and future Ka-band terminals.

“We must work together to break down long-held siloed practices, build a united satcom community and more importantly provide robust and complementary satcom capabilities,” she wrote.

She cited an August 2014 report from Defense Department that says a decentralized system limits the Pentagon’s capacity to manage military enterprise-based SATCOM “as a holistic capability to best support the warfighter.”

Cowen-Hirsch also wrote partnerships between commercial SATCOM vendors and the Pentagon are key as many systems in place will be used into the late 2020s.

“Such actions represent small yet achievable steps toward “Satcom as a Service” – yet they would optimize reliable system terminals, capacity and capability to deliver abundant options for units to get what’s needed, where it’s needed,” she wrote.