[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 106 (Wednesday, June 24, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Page S3430]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

  SA 6275. Ms. ALSOBROOKS submitted an amendment intended to be 
proposed by her to the bill S. 4784, to authorize appropriations for 
fiscal year 2027 for military activities of the Department of Defense, 
for military construction, and for defense activities of the Department 
of Energy, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal 
year, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as 
follows:

       At the appropriate place in title II, insert the following:

     SEC. ___. MODERNIZATION OF RESILIENT SATELLITE COMMUNICATIONS 
                   GATEWAY ARCHITECTURE.

       (a) Program Required.--The Secretary of the Army shall, 
     acting through the Combat Capabilities Development Command 
     C5ISR Center, carry out a program to develop, demonstrate, 
     and transition to operational use of a resilient, virtualized 
     satellite communications gateway capability. In carrying out 
     the program, the Secretary shall--
       (1) demonstrate cloud-hosted satellite communications 
     gateway operations capable of restoring service to deployed 
     forces within hours of the loss or degradation of a fixed 
     gateway;
       (2) develop a deployable, government-owned gateway 
     appliance providing equivalent virtualized capability for 
     disconnected, classified, or contested environments in which 
     commercial cloud connectivity is not available;
       (3) demonstrate the carriage of live operational traffic at 
     a regional hub node, including seamless handover between the 
     virtualized capability and legacy gateway infrastructure;
       (4) ensure that the resulting capability operates 
     alongside, and does not require the wholesale replacement of, 
     existing gateway equipment; and
       (5) develop and demonstrate a deployable satellite 
     communications teleport solution that uses digital 
     intermediate frequency in combination with cloud-hosted 
     satellite communications services to replace reliance on 
     expensive, difficult-to-replace large-aperture antennas with 
     a distributed architecture of multiple smaller antennas, each 
     not greater than five meters in diameter, capable of being 
     rapidly deployed, reconfigured, and restored following loss 
     or degradation of a fixed teleport site.
       (b) Milestone.--The Secretary of the Army shall structure 
     the program required by subsection (a) to achieve a 
     demonstrated operational capability carrying live Department 
     of Defense traffic not later than September 30, 2027.
       (c) Report.--Not later than 180 days after the date of the 
     enactment of this Act, the Secretary of the Army shall submit 
     to the congressional defense committees a report on the plan 
     of the Secretary to carry out the program required by 
     subsection (b), including a description of milestones, 
     anticipated transition partners, and the resources required 
     within amounts authorized to be appropriated by this Act.
       (d) Funding.--The Secretary shall carry out the program 
     required under subsection (b) using amounts authorized to be 
     appropriated for the Network C3I Advanced Technology Program.
                                 ______