Airmen train for Wideband Global SATCOM

  • Published
  • By Staff Sgt. Don Branum
  • 50th Space Wing Public Affairs
SCHRIEVER AIR FORCE BASE, Colo. (AFPN) --  Five Airmen from the 3rd Space Operations Squadron here were the first to finish training recently for the Wideband Global SATCOM system, which is scheduled to launch Oct. 9.

Wideband Global SATCOM, or WGS, is the successor to the Defense Satellite Communications System and will offer 12 times the currently available bandwidth per satellite.

Airmen with the 50th Operations Support Squadron began developing products for WGS in 2004. The task-based training and evaluation system they developed identifies operational tasks that require proficiency, trains Airmen on these tasks and evaluates their performance once they've been trained.

Capts. Rod Lambert and Danny Matous of the 50th OSS instructed the first course. Airmen spent approximately two months training on the new system. The classes covered WGS subsystems, such as electrical power, attitude control and propulsion, as well as operational tasks needed to command the vehicle from the operations floor, Captain Lambert said. The WGS training will be offered four or five times per year.

Staff Sgt. Mark Brady was one of the five students from 3rd SOPS who attended the an earlier class as well as the recently updated class. 

"It's gone through a lot of changes since its inception," he said. "The system was brand-new when I first went through it. The training is completely different now."

The WGS satellites will be easier to command because both the satellites and the ground control system are smarter than their DSCS predecessors, Sergeant Brady said.  

"WGS is a much more advanced system than DSCS," he said. "It can identify a problem and route around it automatically -- it doesn't always need operators to tell it how to fix itself. Plus, the method of commanding is different. We have task-based commands now: instead of having to type in commands manually, the commands are predefined."

Predefined commands reduce some of the risk inherent in satellite operations, which means fewer satellite operators can do the same job in less time.

"It makes operations safer because it takes out much of the possibility for human error," Sergeant Brady said. "With DSCS, we have to have two people verify each command, but with WGS, the commands are already verified. We already know they're going to work."

Tech. Sgts. Teoifolis Williams and Shannon Stromberg and Staff Sgts. Rande Johnson and Lamar Boyd were other students in the class. They were selected because their expertise would help the 50th OSS further develop the training for the next class.

"The students of the first class were experts themselves," Captain Lambert said.

Sergeant Brady explained that the instructors were open to suggestions in order to improve training.

Captain Lambert said his favorite part of the class is the classroom instruction and training on simulators. He plans to fly down to watch WGS launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., but he will be back in his instructor role when the next class begins Oct. 15. 

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