Receiving You Loud And Clear

Space-based communications and surveillance systems have become indispensable to armed forces in the era of networked warfare, which is premised upon reliable and efficient connectivity between sensors, platforms, weapons, and warfighters throughout the battlespace.

- JR Ng

With increasingly sophisticated threats being posed by military and non-state opponents, the modern warfighter requires a means to access critical information on demand for situational awareness. In addition to meeting warfighting requirements, armed forces must also consider providing their troops the ability to communicate home to maintain their morale and psychological well-being. As most young warfighters are young men and women who have grown up with communication devices in their hands, they expect to be able to maintain contact with home regardless of where they are deployed in the world.

This can be a challenge for expeditionary or maritime forces which are typically spread across a wide area of responsibility (AOR) and almost always over the horizon, particularly for forces deployed in the Asia Pacific. With terrestrial networks based on radio and fibre optic cables limited in range by line of sight (LOS) and geography, space based solutions such as satellite communications (SATCOM) are essential.

However, given the communications satellite development is a costly and technically complex activity that remain out of reach for some Asia Pacific countries, SATCOM connectivity provided by commercial satellite service providers is becoming as essential to the military as the bandwidth it provides and data it delivers.

Inmarsat

Cognisant of this growing opportunity, global SATCOM service provider Inmarsat is aiming to boost its regional presence with its range of high bandwidth services. These include the L-band Alphasat satellite network and the Ka-band (26.5-40 GHz) Global Xpress (GX) satellite network which offer military and commercial users download speeds of up to 50Mbps across the world. The company’s latest $1.6 billion GX network became operational in December 2015, and now comprises four high-speed, Ka-band, mobile broadband communications satellites.