Airbus Defense and Space has been selected by OneWeb’s founder, Greg Wyler, as its industrial partner for the design and manufacturing of its fleet of microsatellites.Capital Alpha Partners, an insider Washington DC USA provider of strategic policy research to financial institutions, has announced that Airbus Defense and Space (Airbus Group) will manufacture 890 Ku-band Cubesats and be a co-owner of the OneWeb, space venture. Founded in 2007, Capital Alpha was originally part of Prudential Equity Group and closely connected to the U.S. Defense Industry.
OneWeb’s founder, Greg Wyler has had similar venture start-up experiences with Terracom Communications, WorldVu Satellites, and O3b Networks Limited. In 2007, Google of Mountain View California invested in Wyler’s Washington DC based O3b Networks.
Wyler had a long working relationship with the U.S. Congress in the past to promote for the need for low-latency, high-speed communications to promote economic and social equality worldwide. Since 2013, the U.S. Defense Department has promoted the concept of private satellite CubeSat constellations as a “redundancy backup” for its spy satellites in case of nuclear attack upon the space-based command and control communication systems. Airbus Defense and Space is part of the French Government’s Airbus Group and a key competitor to America’s Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, and SpaceX. The French Airbus Group evolved from (EADS) European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company NV.-a conglomerate established to complete against America within the Global Defense and Space Industry. In January 2014, (EADS) was reorganized as Airbus Group NV. With French Government subsidies, Airbus has captured approximately 40% of all commercial airliner orders. (European sovereign states own 25.9% of the total public shares of the Airbus Group). The European Space Agency (ESA) is served by Airbus Defense and Space. Arianespace is a business unit within the Airbus Defense and Space Group, thus providing non-bid launch contracts. French subsidized Industrial aviation and space assets are Airbus Group, Astrium and Eurocopter, EADS, Safran, Thales, Liebherr, Zodiac, etc.
Greg Wyler has a history of not staying long to grow his ventures. For example, he left before witnessing O3b becoming a powerhouse under SES ownership and management. SES is the European Union’s leading telecommunications satellite operator and operates a fleet of more than 50 geostationary satellites able to reach 99% of the World’s population. On July 10, 2014, O3b Ka-band satellites were successfully launched on the French Arianespace launcher. O3b now has eight satellites in orbit, completing their initial constellation and global full services. SES was an early investor with the British bank HSBC.It is alleged that HSBC profited from doing business with (Mexican drug cartels), tax evaders, etc. In 2015, O3b participated in the US 7th Fleet Trident Warrior 2015 exercise. Trident exercise technologies are organized into 10 specific focus areas which include: networks, coalition, information operations, command and control operations, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR), electronic warfare, distance support, information assurance/cross domain solutions, information transport and maritime domain awareness. The US Navy actively tested O3b with the Navy at SPAWAR’s SSC PACIFIC Common Optical Distribution Architecture (CODA) lab.For the Trident Warrior exercises, O3b 1.2m maritime tracking antennas were placed on the USS Fort Worth Littoral Combat Ship (LCS-3), which achieved connectivity speeds of approximately 600Mbps (200Mbps uplink, 400Mbps downlink).
OneWeb’s investors include Qualcomm and the Virgin Galatic Group. Wyler said that he hope to launch the first ten OneWeb satellites by 2017. A completed constellation will include 648 satellites with a ground system. When fully installed in 2019 the throughput is expected to be ten terabytes per second. Company spokesperson gave an indication that U.S. satellite manufacturing location will be in the State of Nevada or Texas. In an interview, Wyler stated, “Our satellites are highly redundant, and we have extra reaction wheels, multiple processors, everything you would have in a telecom-class satellite,” he says. “The fact that they’re small shouldn’t belie the fact that they are highly integrated with all the features you’d have in something larger.” The entire OneWeb project has been kept in secret. Wyler declined to specify how many people are currently working on the OneWeb project, and neither OneWeb nor Airbus have detailed how much each will invest in the joint venture. The business model for OneWeb has been called into question by an industry analyst. From a monetized perspective to set up internet connectivity in poor rural areas may be viewed as a high risk and a low return. With Wyler’s experience with O3b, Arianespace will furnish the launch vehicle, and the support of the DoD and the French Defense Agency could minimize some of the investment risk. Time will tell.
According to Amy Svitak,”…the ability to win U.S. government business could prove more important to the company than past joint ventures. The problem with OneWeb is that Airbus will now be preoccupied building 900 low-cost spacecraft for the next several years, at a time when the U.S. government is passing its capital spending peak for satellites.” Paul Eremenko, a former executive at Google Inc., will head a new business innovation center Airbus Group is opening in Silicon Valley. Eremenko, who was director of engineering at Google’s secretive Advanced Technology and Projects organization, also worked for the DoD’s (DARPA) Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency technology incubator. Airbus stated that it was starting a venture capital arm with an aim to maintain a “technological edge”. With the connection to the U.S. Department of Defenses, French government support, and the Google brand, OneWeb, could very well be another tool to monitor the activities of mobile users in the rural areas of the globe. So far, the French initial funding is only $150 million dollars, which in Silicon Valley is like throwing a pebble in the Pacific Ocean and expecting a great wave.
