NATO to meet integrated waveform baseline of its UHF SATCOM control stations
NewsJanuary 03, 2018
CARLSBAD, Calif. NATO officials tapped Viasat Inc. to upgrade its UHF satellite communications (SATCOM) control stations to comply with the Integrated Waveform (IW) baseline.
Viasat officials comment that the upgrade gives NATO greater communications interoperability, scalability, and flexibility across legacy and next-generation platforms to enhance situational awareness as the battlespace dynamically expands.
Under contract, NATO will upgrade its legacy UHF communications network to Viasat's Visual Integrated SATCOM Information, Operation and Networking (VISION) planning and network management platform, a commercially-available software package that supports all 25-kHz legacy Demand-Assigned Multiple-Access (DAMA) and next-generation IW networks and services.
The Viasat VISION platform gives network operators real-time capabilities to reconfigure UHF satellite networks to meet new mission profiles on-the-fly. By enabling interoperability between DAMA and IW platforms, NATO can double its channel efficiency without additional investment in the UHF space segment.
"Networked forces need to be able to receive and execute orders dynamically in the fog of war. With the Viasat VISION platform, we can use our UHF space segment more efficiently as it more than doubles our existing UHF user access," says Giovanni Battista Durando, NATO Communications and Information Agency, Network Services and IT Infrastructure, Satcom Service Area Owner. "We believe the Viasat VISION platform will give NATO network operators more control over communications stations from a single terminal, simplifying operations and offering multi-site flexibility to ultimately increase the network readiness of the warfighter."
