Photo: SES

The U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) awarded SES’s government subsidiary a blanket purchase agreement (BPA) for the O3b system. The award announced Wednesday is a single award BPA to SES Space & Defense worth up to $270 million over five years. 

Under the contract, SES will provide low-latency, high-throughput satellite services from its satellites in Medium-Earth Orbit (MEO). It includes end-to-end MEO managed services with HTS capacity, broadband services, gateway services, monitoring and control services, satellite terminal leasing and sales, field service representative support, training services and terrestrial backhaul.

SES has provided similar services to the DoD since 2018 under a BPA that ran from May 2018 this year to through April 2023. The ceiling on that contract was $516.7 million.

“We look forward to further supporting DoD users with SES’s MEO HTS capabilities. The new BPA signifies the DoD’s continued interest in MEO as a cornerstone commercial satellite communications capability,” commented David Fields, SES Space & Defense President and CEO. 

Last week, SES pushed back the start date for commercial service for the upgraded O3b mPOWER constellation to the second quarter of 2024 as it deals with power module issues on the satellites.