In response to increasing demand from military customers and governments for wider bandwidth in the air – especially for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR), battlefield surveillance, border patrol, fishery, forestry detection, and protection missions – Inmarsat has launched its new L-MAX leasing service, the company writes in a press release.

L-MAX is to enable government users to connect via Inmarsat ELERA L-band through both the I-4 and ALPHASAT satellites. Until now, for ISR aircraft operations, customers have had to choose between the exemplary Size, Weight, Power and Price features of Inmarsat SwiftBroadband and the throughput advantages of the larger terminals of Inmarsat Global Xpress.

According to Inmarsat, government agencies can now benefit from the best capabilities of both worlds through the Inmarsat L-MAX service with only minor modifications to current SwiftBroadband installations. Launch partner Eclipse Global Connectivity worked closely with the Inmarsat global government team to launch the first commercial operation of this service with a NATO nation.

L-MAX reserves bandwidth and power over a geographic region for a specified duration and uses higher-order modulation and coding (MODCOD) to deliver Internet Protocol (IP) data.

JH