Government/Military

[Via Satellite 04-07-2015] Data Path has received a $6.8-million, firm, fixed-price contract through a sole source acquisition to provide Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) supplies to Denmark. Under the contract, the company is to provide five WGS satellite communications (satcom) terminals to the Danish Air Force and 29 WGS satcom terminals for the Danish Army. Data...

[Via Satellite 04-07-2015] Comtech Mobile Datacom, a subsidiary of Comtech Telecommunications, received a $19.8 million sustainment contract to support the U.S. Army‘s Force 21 Battle Command Brigade and Below – Blue-Force Tracking (BFT-1) program. The Army initiated the contract by exercising Option Year 1 of the company’s three-year BFT-1 sustainment contract and related BFT-1 intellectual...

[Via Satellite 04-06-2015] The Australian government hopes to expedite progress on a military satcom (milsatcom) project that would enable greater use of the United States Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) system that has fallen five years behind schedule. The Joint Project (JP) 2008 Phase 3F – Australian Defence Satellite Communication Capability Terrestrial Enhancement, approved in 2009, supported the...

[Via Satellite 04-06-2015] The North American Treaty Organization (NATO) is in the midst of an evolution. The alliance of 28-nations is pivoting not only in how it operates, but also structurally. NATO is moving toward greater centralization and some potentially significant infrastructure decisions. As an organization that relies extensively on satellite communications, NATO is looking...

[Via Satellite 04-06-2015] Ball Aerospace’s Geostationary Environment Monitoring Spectrometer (GEMS) has completed its Critical Design Review (CDR). The instrument is manifested on the Korea Aerospace Research Institute’s (KARI’s) GEO-Kompsat 2B satellite, which is the second in a set of two satellites for meteorology and space weather monitoring. Ball Aerospace and KARI engineers collaboratively built the...

[Via Satellite 04-06-2015] The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) has appointed M. Annadurai as director of the ISRO Satellite Center (ISAC) as of April 1, 2015. Prior to this role, he served as scientist and program director of ISAC’s Indian Remote Sensing Satellites (IRS) and Small Satellite Systems (SSS) programs. Annadurai joined ISRO in 1982,...

[Via Satellite 04-03-2015] The International Telecommunications Union (ITU) is preparing for what it expects to be a hotly debated series of issues at the upcoming World Radiocommunications Conference 2015 (WRC-15) this November. More than 100 ITU member states just finished the two-week long Second Session of the Conference Preparatory Meeting (CPM15-2), which culminated in the...

[Via Satellite 04-03-2015] Rockwell Collins is launching a new military communications ground-air network that provides advanced interoperable communications for warfighters. Dubbed TruNet, the system uses Rockwell Collins’ Airborne Radio (AR) and Ground Radio (GR) series, coupled with handheld technology from Thales. The Software Defined Radios (SDRs) support narrow and wideband waveforms, high speed, mobile ad...

[Via Satellite 04-03-2015] The Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates (MDA) signed a contract amendment for on-going support of the International Space Station’s (ISS) mobile servicing system. The amendment provides approximately $9.6 million and expands on a December 2014 amendment for roughly $14.2 million to support the robotic system until March 2016....

[Via Satellite 04-01-2015] Airbus Defence and Space and Spectra Group have teamed up to extend government tactical radio reach Beyond Line of Sight (BLOS) using satcom from Inmarsat. The service leverages Spectra’s SlingShot device, which converts existing radios to satellite-enabled devices, to connect using Inmarsat’s L-band Tactical Satellite (L-TAC) service. The partnership brings BLOS voice...