The Air Force’s top information officer said Tuesday protecting the aerial network is one of his top priorities this year. That’s a daunting challenge since the network is hosted on aircraft that are moving exceedingly fast “We think we know how the terrestrial layer works. We think we know how the space layer works, but what happens when you effectively put routers on devices that are traveling Mach 3, or, in a missile, Mach 6?” said Lt. Gen. Bill Lord, USAF’s chief of warfighting integration, to reporters in the Pentagon. Another priority is figuring out the network that will broadcast F-35 intelligence feeds in US-controlled airspace and what types of waveforms are available, he added.
The Space Force is playing midwife to a new ecosystem of commercial satellite constellations providing alternatives to the service’s own Global Positioning Service from much closer to the Earth, making their signals more accurate and harder to jam.