A trusted partner for the current & future fight: Viasat’s Ryan Walters on working alongside the U.S. Army
10-07-2026
3-minute read
This is the Elevator pitch line and will make you want to read the entire article.
Viasat is committed to keeping warfighters connected – across air, land, sea and space – enabling seamless information sharing at critical moments to ensure mission success. Viasat has a 40-year history of supporting the U.S. Army with its modernization initiatives and advancements in tactical communication to support warfighters at the tactical edge. This includes the company’s first product developed way back in 1986, which was a signal-to-noise ratio device.
Ahead of the upcoming 2026 AUSA Annual Conference & Exhibition, we sat down with Ryan Walters, Vice President of Growth & Strategy for U.S. Army programs. We wanted to learn more about his career, Viasat’s work with the Army, and the challenges and opportunities that lie ahead.
Can you tell us about your military background, what brought you to Viasat, and how that experience helps support the Army's modernization priorities?
I spent 20 years in the U.S. Army, primarily as a special operations helicopter pilot with the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, deploying worldwide and working closely with the special operations community. Throughout my military career, I relied on advanced communications systems and experienced firsthand the importance of resilient connectivity in complex operational environments.
After retiring from the Army, I moved into the aerospace and defense industry, where I continued following advances in space and communications technologies. Viasat stood out because of its innovation in satellite communications and its growing role in delivering integrated solutions across defense domains. Seeing the advancement of the ViaSat-3 satellites was also a big draw, especially knowing how important advanced satellite capabilities are for global operations. After joining Viasat, I quickly realized the breadth of capabilities we provide for governments beyond SATCOM alone.
My job is to grow Viasat's work with the Army by combining operational experience with industry expertise. This shapes how we approach Army modernization. We start by really understanding the challenges soldiers face in the field, especially in contested environments where communications, navigation and information sharing are critical to mission success.
Viasat works closely with soldiers through operational exercises such as Project Convergence to gather real-world feedback and better understand emerging requirements. Many of our team members have military experience themselves, which helps us develop solutions that support current programs while preparing the Army for future initiatives like Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2).
Our goal is to be more than a technology provider. We strive to be a trusted partner that helps deliver resilient, interoperable capabilities for the future fight. We’re designing future-proof solutions for long-standing programs like Blue Force Tracking while preparing for NGC2 and what it looks like as it evolves.
The ability to fight, win and survive in contested and denied environments is a major focus across the multi-domain battlespace, not only for the Army but for the entire Joint Force. I think Viasat has a lot of operational credibility and end user experience to offer through its technologies and portfolios.
What is the most significant challenge facing the Army currently?
The transformation initiatives the Army has identified need focus and growth, and I think the Army is taking the right approach. There will be growing pains along the way, but the direction is the right one.
Where I see one of the biggest challenges, and where Viasat can help the most, is in the joint force and allied operations areas. The Army is learning what it takes to fight and win alongside naval, Marine Corps and air forces, and to be truly interoperable with them. Look at INDOPACOM, for example. The evolution from Project Convergence to in-theater collaboration through exercises and activities in the region shows that the Army has invested in that fight. It recognizes it has a role there, and that it can’t do it alone.
There’s still a long way to go to be fully joint, but that’s how we operate at Viasat. Many of our solutions aren’t singularly focused on the Army, Navy, Air Force or Marine Corps. We help our customers navigate the joint story, and capabilities like our Tactical Mission Fabric can transform that process by connecting sensors, systems and people (i.e. decision-makers) to support the multi-domain operations needed to fight and win.
As a former service member, what opportunities do you see for the Army as it continues to scale Next Generation Command & Control (NGC2) across the force?
NGC2 is a dominant effort for the Army right now, and several units are already well down the path of experimenting with it and taking it to the field. NGC2 won’t be one size fits all. It will take on many different shapes as it matures, and the Army can tailor and scale it across corps and commands, all the way down the echelon to the operator at the edge, based on the real-time problems each is facing. As someone who has been that operator, that flexibility matters.
The biggest opportunity I see is that NGC2 keeps the Army from being siloed with a single supplier or vendor. The Army can bring together best-of-breed applications and capabilities to build what next-generation command and control needs to be. Viasat has a clear role to play in transport, and in complementing data layers and applications alongside other industry partners. We have a long history of collaboration, and we’re excited to keep that moving forward while we help the Army work through this process.
NGC2 is exciting and challenging, and those challenges are sometimes the most rewarding to solve. Viasat can play a critical role to play in helping the Army and the other services achieve those goals.
Speaking of NGC2, Viasat was involved in the most recent Project Convergence-Capstone 6 (PC-C6) exercise in late July. What were some of your key takeaways from the exercise?
PC-C6 was the third Project Convergence Capstone exercise in a row that Viasat has participated in. As I mentioned earlier, I value the fact that we didn’t just send equipment, hardware or software out to Fort Irwin. We sent people to be alongside the soldiers and work through problems with them directly. Every problem set is different, and not every technology works perfectly when you’re experimenting in real-world conditions, so having our people right there makes a difference.
One of the key lessons was the challenge of integration, pulling all of these solutions together into something that works for the soldier. We also received valuable feedback on mature capabilities like our free space optics (FSO). We take that feedback straight back to our product and program teams: what worked, what didn’t, what soldiers liked and disliked, and where we need to make changes. We’re also watching how proven solutions like NetAgility can grow and scale to strengthen communications resilience, so the customer has primary, alternate, contingency and emergency (PACE) layers working for them.
Project Convergence is a high-profile event, but in our experience, it’s also a launching pad for smaller, more focused activities. The biggest difference we’re seeing now is that this technology isn’t staying in a controlled environment in the middle of the desert. It’s being carried forward faster into combatant commands and tested in operational theaters in real time. From a soldier perspective, I think that’s what you want to see happening.
Our goal is to be more than a technology provider. We strive to be a trusted partner that helps deliver resilient, interoperable capabilities for the future fight.
As you think about the upcoming 2026 AUSA conference, is there anything you want to make sure you share with Army leaders and the soldiers you served with?
That’s a tough question because there is obviously a lot we want to share about the technologies and capabilities we have, as well as what we are advancing for the future. The first thing that comes to mind if I could share one takeaway with the soldiers is that we’re fully invested and we take it personally. If it’s not right for the soldier in the field, we haven’t done our job, and we need to go back and work harder. I mentioned many of us are veterans, and many of us still have friends and family serving.
We listen to everyone, from the private first class to the general officer, to understand what their challenges are today and looking forward, what it means to get it right and what the impact is of getting it wrong. We want our solutions to help them achieve their missions and get home safely.
Ryan will be attending the AUSA Annual Conference & Exhibition on October 12-14, 2026 in Washington, D.C. Contact us if you are interested in scheduling a meeting with Ryan or another member of the Viasat team during the conference.
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