Australia May Join U.S.-Boeing Satellite Project

Team Infidel

Forum Spin Doctor
Wall Street Journal
September 5, 2007
Pg. 14
By Andy Pasztor
LOS ANGELES -- Pentagon officials, seeking to foster international cooperation on space programs, are negotiating a possible deal under which the Australian military would pay hundreds of millions of dollars over a number of years to use part of a proposed Air Force satellite-communications project, according to industry officials.
The discussions about such cooperation involving the proposed $1.8 billion Wideband Global Satcom system, being built by Boeing Co., are preliminary and any decision probably is months away, these officials said. Some Air Force space officials previously mentioned the possibility of foreign militaries making a financial investment to share some of the planned satellite capacity.
WGS, as the project is called, envisions a constellation of five or six powerful, high-earth-orbit satellites, providing significantly faster transmissions of video and data than existing U.S. military space systems. Two years behind schedule, the first WGS satellite is set to be launched this year.
A spokeswoman for Boeing declined comment. A spokeswoman for the Air Force said the U.S. "has a great relationship with Australia," adding that "we don't comment on the details of our bilateral relationships with our allies."
The latest discussions, earlier reported by the Australian newspaper, follow a broader trend in the civilian-satellite sector. Government agencies, scientific organizations and academic groups are looking to use global alliances in developing, building and deploying earth-imaging, weather and research satellites. In order to be affordable and effective, "all the [earth-observation] systems have to be coordinated and harmonized," François Auque, chief executive of the Astrium space unit of European Aeronautic Defence & Space Co., told an industry conference in Paris this summer.
Barbara Ryan, associate director for geography at the U.S. Geological Survey, told the same conference that unless countries pool their satellite resources, "we're in jeopardy of walking away from the remarkable record" of advancing global environmental monitoring and weather forecasting. The satellite discussions come at an important time in relations between the White House and the government of Australian Prime Minister John Howard. President Bush, looking for continued Australian support for the war in Iraq, is visiting Mr. Howard and meeting with Australian troops. The two leaders yesterday signed a defense-trade agreement to make it easier to share military information and hardware between the two countries.
While the U.S., Great Britain and other European countries have long cooperated on joint jet-fighter and other aircraft programs, it is relatively recently that Air Force brass have publicly broached the topic of expanding such cooperation to satellite programs. Since such projects are expensive and take a long time to develop, they are seen as good candidates for international cooperation. In the case of Australia, its military is dependent on limited leased capacity and there has been internal debate about the best way to move the country toward a next-generation military-satellite network. Cooperative agreements on military satellites are tricky to negotiate and could raise concerns among some U.S. lawmakers about the appropriate financial contribution from Australia or other allies.
On the military side, the concept of international cooperation on satellite projects isn't well established. There is another communications project, the Advanced Extremely High Frequency program led by Lockheed Martin Corp., that has cooperative agreements with the United Kingdom, the Netherlands and Canada. The project is designed to offer up to 100 times the capacity of existing satellites to provide classified communications for the White House, nuclear forces, military commanders and troops in the field. During its formative stage, the U.S. said allies agreed to pay as much as $550 million.
WGS is closer to deployment than the Lockheed project and its early design stages didn't envision international partners. Based on Boeing's 702 model commercial-satellite platform, the project has been viewed by many in the industry as a pioneer in transferring commercial practices and technology to help provide secure military communications. It isn't clear how much financial support Australia may be willing to give in exchange for a share of the program.
 
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