An AEHF spacecraft at Lockheed Martin’s facility in Sunnyvale, Calif. Photo: Lockheed Martin

[Via Satellite 06-11-2014] The United States, Canada, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom are now using Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) protected communications satellite system, following the successful connection by the United Kingdom earlier this year. The AEHF program is led by the United States Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center. Lockheed Martin is contracted to deliver the Mission Control Segment and six AEHF satellites under the program.

Armed forces in the U.K. began connecting over the course of several weeks beginning at the end of February 2014, using two terminal variants to communicate with the AEHF 2 satellite. One terminal was created for terrestrial connections and another was made for maritime users. Service members contacted the satellite with the shore variant of the Navy Multiband Terminal (NMT) at the Colerne Airfield in Wiltshire, England. U.K. users were able test a connection through the NMT ship variant from Telemetry and Command Station Oakhanger in Hampshire, England.

“AEHF not only delivers higher-bandwidth communications for the U.K., it makes communications with allies faster and easier,” said Mark Calassa, vice president of protected communication systems at Lockheed Martin. “AEHF is showing it can handle the demands of protected coalition communications at high speeds, connecting nations with their own users and allied users across the globe.”