Airbus to Provide Satellite Communications for Belgian Armed Forces

Airbus has signed a contract with the Belgian Ministry of Defence to provide tactical satellite communications services for a 15 year period, the company writes in a press release. The Belgian armed forces will utilise channels of the Airbus UHF (Ultra High Frequency) military communications hosted payload on-board a commercial telecommunications satellite manufactured by Airbus. As the UHF frequency band is a relatively scarce orbital resource, this offering will make up for the capacity shortage around the world, Airbus emphasises. Airbus has already signed several firm orders for this capacity, well ahead of the satellite’s scheduled launch. The UHF payload will be operated from Airbus’s Network Operations Centre in Toulouse. Reportedly, its 18 UHF channels will enable up to 200 simultaneous communications over Europe, the Middle East, Africa, large parts of Asia, as well as the Atlantic Ocean (to eastern Brazil) and the Indian Ocean (to western Australia).

JH