| The Department of Defense (DoD) is transitioning to a fast reaction mobile strike force to support strategic battlefield scenarios. An increase in communications capability (e.g., bandwidth, connectivity, data dissemination) is required to meet the rapidly increasing demand. Across the DoD, leaders are outlining a vision for managing data in a “Net-Centric” environment. This transformation is derived from the objectives of Joint Vision 2020 (JV2020), whose focus is on full spectrum dominance for the DOD warfighter. The Joint Concept of Operations for Global Information Grid (GIG) Network Operations (NetOps) provides the operational construct to achieve this goal. The goal of NetOps is to provide assured and timely end-to-end set of communications and computing services that provides the right information to the right user at the right time with the appropriate protection. Since DoD Satellite Communications (SATCOM) is a key enabler in information superiority, it is essential that future SATCOM systems develop operations management systems (OMS) and network management systems (NMS) which embody the tenets of a Net-Centric environment. Net-centric warfare and the advent of Internet Protocol (IP) packet based communications provides the possibility for many operational and network management capabilities to be decentralized within the Global Information Grid (GIG). The Transformational Communications Satellite System (TSAT) is the first SATCOM system that will employ these tenets by utilizing a distributed network and operational management system—the Transformational Satellite Communications System Mission Operations System (TMOS).
This paper intends to describe the warfighter’s process to plan a TSAT mission and identify TMOS capabilities to support the warfighter’s mission plan—the Ops Timeline. The Ops Timeline will also show how planning TSAT missions will be significantly reduced from legacy communication systems and more importantly, the warfighter’s role in planning will be reduced allowing them more time for mission preparation and execution. The OPS Timeline is also intended to help guide further development of the TSAT mission planning Tactics, Techniques and Procedures (TTPs) and discuss how TSAT will support all missions whether high or low priority (real time planning) along all phases of the planning process (i.e., Long Term, Short Term, and Real Time phases).
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