Providing the U.S. Air Force with resilient multi-orbit connectivity during Bamboo Eagle

Viasat is committed to helping government customers achieve their connectivity goals and enable military operations with reliable communications across the battlespace. Our Hybrid SATCOM Approach (HSA) aviation platform delivers resilient communications needed to support the warfighter and deter adversaries attempting to disrupt critical communications by targeting a single system or network.

Last summer, for example, Viasat successfully demonstrated our advanced multi-orbit, hybrid satellite communications (SATCOM) capabilities designed for the U.S. Mobility Air Forces. The demonstration was in support of the U.S. Air Force (USAF) Air Mobility Command (AMC) during Bamboo Eagle 2025 (BE-25), one of the largest joint coalition exercises focused on large-scale operations in a highly contested environment. During the exercise, the Viasat Government SATCOM team, part of Viasat’s Communications Services segment, showcased the HSA capability, a flexible airborne platform offering multi-orbit, multi-frequency, and multi-network/constellation satellite connectivity.

Viasat’s participation in the BE-25 exercise and demonstration of the HSA platform took place across multiple locations and wide spans of the Pacific Ocean. This was conducted under a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) between Viasat and the U.S. Air Force Life Cycle Management Center. The CRADA facilitated experiments and demonstrations to evaluate the HSA system performance and its ability to support AMC fleet communications needs. This type of CRADA demonstration effort will help achieve interoperability for the USAF Command, Control, Communications, and Battle Management (C3BM) architecture and accelerate the development and fielding of resilient, secure, and adaptive SATCOM solutions for contested communications environments.

Evaluating a new terminal capability in an operational environment typically requires significant funding and time to support non-recurring engineering, test, integration, and installation of equipment on designated government aircraft. However, the CRADA structure serves as a significant cost and schedule risk reduction effort that helps the government to more efficiently evaluate new capabilities, highlighting the implicit benefit of private-public partnerships.

“Through this CRADA, we are working with the U.S. Air Force to experiment, test, and demonstrate a mature hybrid SATCOM solution that can directly address emerging warfighter communications needs,” said Jason Sabol, Vice President of Government Aviation, Viasat Government. “Bamboo Eagle 2025 was a critical proving ground for showing how the Viasat Hybrid SATCOM Approach can deliver true resiliency in operationally limited environments, today and in the future. We are proud to support the Department of the Air Force and Air Mobility Command through this CRADA and look forward to new experiments and demonstrations.”

With Viasat’s dual-band (Ku/Ka), global aero terminal as the base and a modular open architecture, the HSA platform offers highly flexible, multi-network, multi-band, and multi-orbit SATCOM capability that can seamlessly traverse Viasat’s high-capacity Ka-band and global Ku-band satellite networks, as well as third-party government and military networks (to include Mil-Ka).

Delivering a truly hybrid, TRL-9 solution for the exercise, Viasat leveraged assets across Low Earth Orbit (LEO), Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), Geostationary Orbit (GEO), and Highly Elliptical Orbit (HEO) to provide the USAF with a resilient, flexible communications framework that seamlessly supported mission requirements. Viasat’s HSA system was designed specifically for the Mobility Air Forces fleet to meet their demanding and exacting mission requirements.

Vic Farah, Senior Vice President of Viasat Government Services and Solutions, said, “Viasat is honored to build on our long-standing partnership with the U.S. Air Force. Our resilient HSA platform leverages both commercial and government networks to deliver flexible, multi-orbit communications - ensuring mission success across a wide range of demanding operational environments." 

With the HSA, Viasat is delivering the operational flexibility, interoperability, and resilience that U.S. government customers, including the USAF, need to support their missions worldwide.

Benefits of HSA include:

• Global high-capacity coverage with cellular-like roaming across satellite frequency bands, networks and constellations, and satellite orbits
• Beyond line-of-sight (BLOS) connectivity in Ku- and Ka-band
• Ability to support up to three antennas (LEO Tile, Ku/Ka array antenna, L-band, Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) or others) for increased operational flexibility and resilience
• Modular adapter plate to support future technology insertion under the existing Outer Mold Line (OML), reducing the need for further non-recurring engineering (NRE) to evolve technology
• NetAgility™ to enable Automated Primary, Alternate, Contingency, Emergency (A-PACE) for operations in communications-contested environments

Further showcasing the innovation and technological expertise of the HSA platform, the platform was selected as a winner of the Mobile Satellite User Association’s Government Mobile Innovation award in 2025. These annual awards recognize innovations in mobile connectivity on land, at sea, in the air, and in space.