Iridium Satellite has announced two new initiatives aimed toward the U.S. military market.

The company has approval to provide its 9601 data modem to the U.S. Department of Defense and other approved users through its contract with the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA).

Based on the company’s short-burst data messaging service, the modem is already used in commercial applications such as asset tracking, remote monitoring and telemetry reporting. Iridium expects its application to meet a broad variety of requirements among users in defense, homeland security, logistics, force tracking, remote sensing and other data applications.

The contract is managed under the Enhanced Mobile Satellite Services Service Manager’s Office.

Iridium also has participated in phase one testing of its Netted Iridium service with the U.S. Marine Corps Warfighting Lab. Netted Iridium is a push-to-talk technology voice and data service offering a reliable, rapidly deployable, over-the-horizon communications solution for the military and first-responder community.

Iridium hopes to make the service available to the broader defense, homeland security and first responder communities in 2007.