Viasat has earned two prestigious accolades at the 2025 Mobile Satellite Innovation Awards, hosted by the Mobile Satellite Users Association (MSUA) during the Satellite 2025 event in Washington, D.C.
The company’s Hybrid SATCOM Approach (HSA) and Multi-Domain Unified Secure Integrated Communications (MUSIC) solutions were named winners in the Government Mobile Innovation and Software Defined Network Innovation categories, respectively.
Held annually, the MSUA awards highlight cutting-edge advancements in mobile connectivity across all domains—land, sea, air, and space. Viasat’s award-winning technologies are purpose-built to meet the evolving communications needs of military and government users operating in contested and complex environments.
Susan Miller, Viasat Government President, said, “Viasat is honored to be recognized by MSUA with the Government Mobile and Software Defined Network Innovation awards. These awards are a testament to the commitment of our teams and their work to develop and deliver innovative, flexible SATCOM and advanced tactical network solutions for the real mission needs of government and military customers.”
Vic Farah, Senior Vice President of Viasat Government Services and Solutions, added, “Today’s battlespace is rapidly changing and we’re proud to be on the forefront of supporting modern missions with highly reliable and resilient SATCOM for seamless data and intelligence sharing. Our team is extremely focused on solving customer challenges and our HSA platform solution offers customers the flexibility to quickly access the multi-orbit, multi-network communications required for a wide range of missions.”
Viasat Hybrid SATCOM Approach (HSA)
Viasat’s HSA is a next-generation airborne communications platform that delivers resilient, multi-orbit, multi-network connectivity. Leveraging a modular open architecture and a dual-band global aero terminal (Ku/Ka) as its foundation, HSA enables seamless roaming across satellite constellations, frequency bands, and orbits. The platform delivers global, high-capacity coverage with a cellular-like experience, even in challenging operational theaters.
Designed for flexibility, HSA supports integration with a broad array of terminals—including Viasat’s Ku/Ka array, Ku-LEO, L-band, UHF, and Mobile User Objective System (MUOS)—allowing operators to tailor connectivity solutions to specific mission needs. This adaptable architecture enhances redundancy, operational resilience, and mission continuity.
HSA has already been fielded aboard government and defense aircraft, integrating trusted and field-proven technologies into a unified, future-ready connectivity ecosystem.
MUSIC: Software-Defined Networking for Multi-Domain Operations
Viasat’s MUSIC system represents a significant leap forward in secure, software-defined communications for defense applications. Developed in collaboration with the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering (OUSD R&E) under the Technology Readiness and Experimentation (T-REX) initiative, MUSIC extends Viasat’s software-defined networking (SDN) expertise to enable dynamic, secure, and scalable communications for uncrewed systems and multi-domain operations.
David Schmolke, who is Vice President of Mission Connections and Cybersecurity and leads the tactical networking team behind MUSIC, added, “Our team worked closely to understand and address customer needs throughout the development of the MUSIC architecture. The coordinated use of autonomous systems offers critical operational advantages as the demands to quickly collect and share mission data grow. We are proud to be collaborating with government users in addressing complex tactical networking challenges through advanced, software-defined orchestration capabilities like MUSIC and NetAgility.”
At its core is NetAgility, Viasat’s SDN platform application, which provides intelligent orchestration across heterogeneous networks. MUSIC supports autonomous swarm operations by enabling secure, multipath transport and real-time network optimization—ensuring that critical data reaches the right asset at the right time, regardless of the transport medium or operating domain.
By synchronizing communications across multiple network paths and transports, MUSIC empowers autonomous and uncrewed systems with the agility and connectivity needed to execute complex missions in contested and rapidly changing environments.
