...wide variety of companies that support an increasing role for defense and commercial contractors in helping government agencies find timely and cost-effective ways of acquiring space assets and services. The alliance was formed in 2011 to increase awareness about the benefits of hosted payloads on commercial satellites. Members consist of spacecraft operators, satellite manufacturers, system integrators and launch vehicle providers.

"The Hosted Payloads Alliance helps Northrop Grumman leverage its experience in hosted payloads and disaggregated space to meet global security needs on cost and on schedule," said Robert V. Burke, space systems vice president and deputy general manager for Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems. "Threats to disrupt or deny communications to military services are increasing at the same time that demand for network capacity is growing rapidly," Burke said. "We have extensive experience in providing protected communications payloads to the military and are very interested in working with the alliance to explore opportunities for providing anti-jam communications payloads that are scalable and affordable to increase the resiliency of this technology to all service members."