Army orders military-standard high-speed SATCOM modems from ViaSat in $30.6 million contract
ROCK ISLAND ARSENAL, Ill., 23 May 2014. Satellite communications (SATCOM) experts at ViaSat Inc. in Carlsbad, Calif., will provide the U.S. Army with military-standard high-speed SATCOM modems under terms of a $30.6 million contract announced this week from the Army Contracting Command at Rock Island Arsenal, Ill.
ViaSat will provide the Army with MD-1366(U) strategic EBEM and MD-1366A(U) tactical EBEM equipment under terms of the contract for mil-std communications. ViaSat also will provide an Ethernet service expansion module, hardware and software services and repair, and engineering changes for the EBEM.
The ViaSat EBEM a commercially available bandwidth-efficient modem certified to MIL-STD-188-165B and compliant with STANAG 4486 ed. 3. The MD-1366 defines a new military standard in FDMA for high-speed satellite communications.
The MD-1366 uses military and commercial satellites at X-, C-, Ku-, and Ka-band frequencies to deliver capacity for the military's high-speed broadband and multimedia transmissions.
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The MD-1366 is available in standard strategic configuration (MD-1366/U) and a tactical configuration (MD-1366A/U) that is housed in a ruggedized chassis. This modem uses advanced modulation and coding technology to increase efficiency and throughput, while also providing backwards interoperability with single channel per carrier modems, ViaSat officials say.
The EBEM supports user data rates from 64 kilobits per second to 155 megabits per second. It provides a selectable adaptive coding and modulation mode that automatically adjusts modulation and code rates while maintaining the symbol rate.
The Ethernet service expansion module (ESEM) that the Army is ordering is a plug-in module providing an Ethernet data interface for the modem to enable the modem to support existing and future Ethernet based protocols such as IPv4, IPv6, MPL,S and non-IP data flows.
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When in turbo-coded mode the ESEM enables a new logical data channel that carries encapsulated Ethernet framed packets over the satellite link. The ESEM packet stream can work together with existing fixed serial rate data streams. The MD-1366, which is NIST certified at Security Level 2, provides encryption to protect sensitive-but-unclassified data.
For more information contact ViaSat online at www.viasat.com, or the Army Contracting Command at Rock Island Arsenal at www.acc.army.mil/contractingcenters/acc_ri.
John Keller | Editor
John Keller is editor-in-chief of Military & Aerospace Electronics magazine, which provides extensive coverage and analysis of enabling electronic and optoelectronic technologies in military, space, and commercial aviation applications. A member of the Military & Aerospace Electronics staff since the magazine's founding in 1989, Mr. Keller took over as chief editor in 1995.
