[Satellite News 07-27-10] Astrium has high hopes for its new AirPatrol airborne terminal, which it launched at the Farnborough Airshow last week, Aidan Joy, managing director of secure satcom systems at Astrium told Satellite News.
    While Joy confirmed that Astrium was already working on deals for AirPatrol, the company has yet to establish a date for when it will begin signing up its first customers for the terminal. “We are talking to a number of potential customers right now. Some of these customers are in existing programs and some are in new programs. We are working with a number of fairly well known programs. In 12 months, we hope to see the product selected on a number of programs and platforms and would love to see it established in the market. We want to bring in the first customers, and that is our first major focus. We are working to get it into the market,” said Joy.
    AirPatrol, Astrium’s third generation terminal, will target military and civil markets by supporting applications such as coastguard patrols, emergency and rescue services and policing international borders. While the product’s target markets are diverse, Joy said that the first deals for AirPatrol are likely to be done in the military arena. “I would say our primary focus would be in the military and institutional markets, as well as border security. We are looking at programs both in Europe and in the export market. There are opportunities in both of those areas. They do exist in Europe with programs like Telarion UAVs,” he said.
    AirPatrol enhanced flexibility is one of the terminal’s main selling points, according to Joy, who sees the airborne market as a particularly strong growth area over the next few years. “Having this third generation product is very important to us. This is using carbon fiber composites, solid-state technology and software-defined radio principles to give us a flexible platform on fixed wing, rotary wing, manned or un-manned platforms. So, we are try to design a flexibility for a range of programs that will stand us in good stead in this market going forward.”
    Astrium also is using the software-defined radio principles in the terminal to update waveforms over the air. With these features, the terminal, designed for a 30-year lifespan, allows Astrium to offer the technology for a low total cost of ownership, which was one of the company’s main objectives in crafting an attractive offer to the markets.
    The terminal’s form-factor also hopes to appeal to airline companies, as a typical configuration of AirPatrol weighs just 16 kg, ensuring that the terminal has a minimum impact on an aircraft’s overall flight performance. “We have designed in a number of key technology changes from previous generations. There is a carbon composite construction that we have used throughout the terminal. That has kept the weight down. The basic terminal is now 16 Kg. We are using GAN Solid State amplifier technology to give us improved power output and performance. The antenna pointing systems are something we have designed ourselves, which are particularly important if you go to Ka-band and need accurate pointing at higher frequencies. We have designed it to be modular so we can provide variants in X-band, Ku-band, and Ka-band. It can be flexible in terms of frequencies and antenna sizes. So, anything from 0.4 up to 1.1 meters in terms of antenna size,” said Joy.
    One of the challenges for Astrium’s new terminal is whether the global economic situation, which has resulted in a number of governments tightening their defense budgets, will have any impact on Astrium’s success. Joy said the economic situation has put pressure on the European programs and has increased the value and importance of the export market. “I think in terms of export markets, the European programs are fairly resilient. In the UAV field, there are significant cost benefits for countries that move to un-manned programs rather than manned programs. There is certainly the impact. It changes our priorities to some of the different programs, particularly more towards the export market.”