DSEI 2025: Orbit has high hopes for latest compact multi-purpose satcom terminal

Israel’s Orbit Communication Systems has high hopes for its recently launched MPT30Ka Satcom On-The-Move (SOTM) deployable multi-purpose satellite communications (satcom) terminal (MPT): its most compact satcom system designed to provide satcom-on-the-move capabilities for military vehicles, maritime vessels and for rapid dismounted deployment.

Speaking to ESD at the DSEI 2025 defence exhibition in London on 11 September, Lior Rudminsky, Orbit’s vice president of products and solutions, said of the MPT30Ka SOTM system, “We have a high probability of opportunities with this one; it’s a very promising one.” He added that the company has high expectations for the system not just with the Israel Defence Forces but internationally, noting that, “We are doing a lot of demonstrations worldwide. We just finished yesterday a very important demonstration in Europe.”

As Rudminsky explained, the MPT30Ka SOTM system is designed to offer uninterrupted, high-capacity connectivity in jamming and GPS-denied environments. The system uses multi-orbit (GEO/MEO/HEO/LEO) satellite constellations as well as at multi-polarisations and multiple frequencies (29-31 GHz and 19.2-21.2 Ghz) to negate interference.

The system has also been designed to be low in power consumption system and compact in design, meaning it can stay with the troops using it when they dismount from their vehicle, thus offering full satcom connectively at the forefront of operations. This, for example, enables access to data feeds such as real-time high-definition video from unmanned aerial vehicles, maximising a unit’s situational awareness.

Orbit launched its compact MPT-30 (30 cm) and MPT-46 (45.6 cm) multi-purpose satellite communications terminals, designed to provide vehicle-mounted SOTM connectivity, in March 2024. The company then launched its MPT30Ka SOTM system in March 2025.

Explaining the Orbit ethos, Rudminsky told ESD, “We are a very innovation-focused company, where we are trying through our activities to implement always new innovations in our products, whether those are upgrades or add-ons to our systems or totally new capabilities and new developments. So, we are looking and speaking with the troops on the ground, with the forces, to better understand their challenges, their gaps, and we try to fill them with Orbit technology. So we’re doing it on the fly, because we understand how important it is for them to have capabilities like operating in a GPS-denied environment, because this is the reality today.”