SES’s Luxembourgish 50% affiliate GovSat has secured a long term commercial satellite communications contract to support the operational phase of NATO Alliance Ground Surveillance (AGS).
The contract is for an end-to-end service and includes the delivery of satellite capacity in commercial Ku-band – largely coming from the SES fleet – as well as associated capacity management services.
These services support the command & control and sensor data communications required by NATO Global Hawk vehicles over the AGS operational area.
(The first of NATO’s five unmanned air vehicles rolled off the factory line in San Diego on Thursday, 4 June 2015. The Global Hawk Block 40 is part of the Alliance Ground Surveillance Program (AGS). Courtesy of Military Videos and YouTube)
GovSat is a public-private partnership between the Luxembourg Government and SES.
It offers capacity leases and related 24/7 secure operations from facilities with EU and NATO clearances to governments and institutions.
The AGS system consists of air, ground and support elements performing all-weather, persistent wide-area terrestrial and maritime surveillance in near real-time.
(Learn More. With more than 50 satellites, we connect people, businesses, institutions and communities around the world, reaching 99% of the world’s population. We enable the delivery of more than 7,200 TV channels to 312 million TV homes. We enrich the travel experience aboard ships and planes. Courtesy of SES and YouTube)
AGS will be able to contribute to a range of missions such as protection of ground troops and civilian populations, border control and maritime safety, the fight against terrorism, crisis management and humanitarian assistance in areas affected by natural disasters.
“The award of this contract confirms the unique capability of GovSat to address the secure communication requirements of a NATO defence program, including the handling of sensitive and classified material,” said Patrick Biewer, CEO of GovSat.
“GovSat is now de-facto operational, well ahead of the GovSat-1 satellite launch which is foreseen for next year.”
SES is the world-leading satellite operator, with more than 50 geostationary satellites (GEO) and, through its subsidiary O3b Networks, 12 medium Earth orbit satellites (MEO).
Focusing on value-added, end-to-end solutions in four key market verticals (Video, Enterprise, Mobility and Government), SES provides satellite communications services to broadcasters, content and internet service providers, and mobile and fixed network operators, as well as business and governmental organizations worldwide.
SES’s fleet includes the ASTRA satellite system, which has the largest Direct-to-Home (DTH) reach in Europe. Through its ownership of O3b Networks, SES significantly enhances existing data capabilities, and is the first satellite provider to deliver a differentiated and scalable GEO-MEO offering worldwide.
GovSat‘s mission is to provide secure, reliable, and accessible governmental satellite communication services to address the demand resulting from defense and civilian security applications.
The company’s first satellite GovSat-1 is scheduled to be operational in the 4th Quarter of 2017.
GovSat-1 will be a multi-mission satellite which will use X-band and military Ka-band frequencies on high-power and fully steerable mission beams to support multiple operations.
