SES Space & Defence to provide hybrid space-based architecture

SES Space & Defence, a wholly-owned subsidiary of SES, joins the Defence Innovation Unit’s (DIU) Hybrid Space Architecture Network initiative. SES’s Hybrid Space Architecture II project will showcase an automatically orchestrated secure integrated multi-orbit network that interconnects commercial and government networks to deliver assured and affordable, low-latency, multi-path communications across a scalable and resilient multi-domain network.

SES Space & Defence will deliver an engineered multi-orbit network leveraging Secure Integrated Multi-Orbit Networking (SIMON). This will enable always-on connectivity as an affordable, resilient alternative to traditional Primary, Alternate, Contingency, and Emergency (PACE) and auto-PACE operations currently used by warfighters across the Department of Defence (DoD) worldwide. By blending LEO, MEO, and GEO capabilities purposefully, SIMON ensures that the warfighters’ data can affordably traverse multiple orbital regimes simultaneously, adapting and adjusting in real time to changing mission requirements.

“With SIMON, warfighters will have the ability to ‘set and forget’ their user terminals and affordably realise assured connectivity across multiple orbits,” says David Fields, President and CEO of SES Space & Defence. “This transformational approach solves a decades-long dichotomy of affordability versus resilience, providing SATCOM agility, flexibility, and reliability for the forward-deployed personnel.”