Telesat LIGHTSPEED – CDR NEXT QUESTION
CDR asked Ottawa Bureau Chief, James Careless, to sit down with BGen (Ret’d) Michael Adamson, Telesat’s new Senior Director of Defence Strategy and Business Development, for an exclusive interview.
At the culmination of his 30-year career with the Canadian Armed Forces, Brigadier-General G. Michael (Mike) Adamson became the inaugural Commander of 3 Canadian Space Division and the Joint Force Space Component Command. After his retirement from the CAF in June 2024, BGen (Ret’d) Adamson was appointed as Telesat’s new Senior Director of Defence Strategy and Business Development. In this role, BGen (Ret’d) Adamson is helping to shepherd Telesat’s Lightspeed low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation into service. Scheduled to start launching into orbit in the next 18-24 months, Lightspeed will be a global network initially consisting of 198 made-in-Canada (by MDA Space) satellites that will seamlessly integrate with on-ground data networks. The result will be true global broadband connectivity.
WHAT IS TELESAT LIGHTSPEED?
CDR: To begin, please tell us about the low Earth Orbit (LEO) capability that Telesat is developing that can be used by the Canadian Armed Forces.
BGen (Ret’d) Adamson: Certainly. Telesat is developing a low Earth orbit constellation that we’re calling Telesat Lightspeed. We passed the preliminary design review last fall and we’ll be moving into the Critical Design Review this summer with an expectation that we’ll be launching satellites in the latter half of 2026 and aiming to achieve full global service by the end of 2027.
We’re entering into a market that is well established, as we have seen with some of our competitors. Their efforts certainly have proven that the model works and that there is a significant appetite globally for low Earth orbit satellite communications capabilities. We think Lightspeed is going to offer the Government of Canada an ability to address national communications requirements, certainly addressing some of the underserved communities across the expanse of Canada, and additionally we hope it’s going to address northern, and indeed global, communications requirements for the Department of National Defence (DND).
READ: SPACE & COMMUNICATIONS Report – Space Rocks!
TAKING ADVANTAGE OF THE
COMMERCIAL SPACE INDUSTRY
CDR: How did your view of commercial space capabilities evolve after you had served as Commander of 3 Canadian Space Division?
BGen (Ret’d) Adamson: We have seen a significant shift in the paradigm of how commercial capabilities can be integrated into the defence mission over the last few years.
Space is hard, it is resource-intensive, and very few nations possess the ability to fund and operate all of the various missions and capabilities within their own jurisdictions. This has driven defence departments to look at leveraging commercial capabilities where they can, which allows them in turn to concentrate their resources on more militarily focused missions. Canada, as well as a number of its allies and partners, have adopted this approach: The idea of using or exploiting what you have, buying what you can, and only building what you must.
Satellite communications are a perfect match for this model of leveraging commercial capacity to meet defence requirements. This paradigm shift has driven the creation of various commercial integration strategies amongst our allies and was the premise behind the creation of the Commercial Integration Cell within the Canadian Space Operations Centre in DND.
CDR: Now, there’s no doubt that success in the digital battlespace relies on space superiority.
So what additional capabilities can DND achieve with Telesat Lightspeed services?
BGen (Ret’d) Adamson: Having space superiority indicates that you have the ability to undertake your mission at a time and place of your choosing. To achieve such superiority, you’ve got to have resources that are reliable, secure, and flexible. They’ve got to be resilient, they have to be redundant, and they have to be robust
Certainly, something like a proliferated architecture provides a lot of those elements.
It’s a lot more difficult to disrupt, deny or degrade a single satellite in a constellation of hundreds or thousands and bring that system down, than it is to bring down a single bespoke satellite in a one-off situation. In addition to the inherent resilience of a proliferated system, the way that Lightspeed has been architected from the beginning is to be secure. We have incorporated a lot of cyber security standards into the system right from the beginning, to ensure that we can meet the most stringent security requirements that governments and defence organizations will have. The idea is that Lightspeed will have a resilient and secure capability that will contribute to what amounts to space superiority for our allies and partners in the domain.
A CANADIAN MADE CAPABILITY
CDR: In today’s dynamic geopolitical environment, especially what’s happening between Canada and the US, how should DND be thinking about sovereign capabilities versus ‘Allied by Design’ approaches to connectivity? After all, I would imagine that Canada wouldn’t feel too safe relying on Starlink these days.
BGen (Ret’d) Adamson: Well, I won’t speak to the Starlink issue, but certainly I think there’s a lot to be said for having your own sovereign capabilities that you know are going to be available as required, and that certainly should have an appeal from a Canadian perspective.
Lightspeed has a uniquely Canadian pedigree. Telesat is a Canadian company with 56-plus years of experience in operating satellites and providing satellite communications around the world. And notably, we’ve partnered with MDA Space in Montreal, who are going to be building our satellites over the next couple of years. This comes down to Lightspeed’s LEO satellite constellation being built in Canada to meet Canadian purposes. I think that’s a really good news story for Canada.
Certainly, when we’re talking to our own government and DND, the Canadian element is a key component of that discussion. I think it provides a level of assurance that the capability is going to be able to meet Canada’s needs without having to worry too much about third party providers or the vagaries of geopolitical uncertainty.
CYBERSECURITY
CDR: How is Telesat staying ahead in terms of advancing cyber capability, at a time when the cyber environment is becoming increasingly dangerous and under attack?
BGen (Ret’d) Adamson: What we’ve seen historically is that as commercial companies have become involved with defence operations, doing so paints a bit of a target on them. We’ve seen this with the Ukraine conflict, specifically with companies like ViaSat and Starlink that came under cyber-attack due to their involvement in the early stages of that war.
Taking those lessons learned while understanding that Telesat Lightspeed will be providing services to defence and government customers, we’ve architected it from the beginning to employ a lot of the cyber security safeguards that we would expect would be requested by those users. In particular, there’s a number of standards and protocols that we know would be part of a baseline requirement to do business with the U.S. Department of Defense, in order to meet certain Security Agency requirements there. We feel that if we can meet those as a baseline, then that would certainly satisfy most security concerns and make us competitive and interesting to other government departments as well.
What we’re looking to do is to convince defence departments that Lightspeed is a reliable and secure platform on which they can move not just unclassified traffic, but classified traffic as well. We’ll be working with potential government and defence customers over the next few months to demonstrate how the system is going to work and how they can maintain custody of their traffic on the network, to give them the comfort and confidence that Lightspeed is reliable, flexible, and secure.
CDR: Just a final question. After reading this, if I was a member of the Canadian Armed Forces, I’d be saying, “OK. When can I sign up for Telesat Lightspeed? When do we go online? What sort of schedule are we looking at?”
BGen (Ret’d) Adamson: As I stated earlier, we’re looking at our commencement of launch in the last half of 2026, with the remainder of the satellites launching through to the latter half of 2027. The initial constellation is planned to be in the order of 198 satellites, which will give us full global coverage.
In the meantime, we’ll be working with the Canadian government and any other potential customers to make sure that they are ready to go when Lightspeed is up and running. This includes working with third party terminal providers and antenna manufacturers to ensure that there will be a number of user terminal options in the marketplace to meet the various user requirements.
James Careless is CDR’s Ottawa Bureau Chief
