Viasat Inc., a global communications company, announced it has successfully upgraded the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) Ultra High Frequency (UHF) satellite communications (SATCOM) control stations to comply with the new Integrated Waveform (IW) baseline.
Using Viasat’s Visual Integrated Satellite communications Information, Operation and Networking (VISION) software platform, NATO gains greater communications interoperability, scalability and flexibility across legacy and next-generation platforms, which it expects will significantly enhance warfighters’ situational awareness and operational insights on the battlespace.
Viasat’s VISION platform is the first commercially-available software package to simultaneously support all 25-kHz legacy Demand-Assigned Multiple-Access (DAMA) and next-generation IW networks and services. The VISION platform has enabled the following benefits for NATO:
- Faster communications: VISION reduced time to access software from 90 seconds to 4 seconds;
- Better reliability: VISION offered greater reliability when compared to previous waveforms;
- Improved functionality: VISION doubled NATO’s channel efficiency; and
- Enhanced bandwidth: VISION gave network operators real-time capabilities to reconfigure UHF satellite networks to meet new mission profiles on-the-fly.
“Viasat’s close partnership with NATO has been instrumental in helping the agency transition to new IW standards ahead of government schedules,” said Giovanni Battista Durando, NATO Communications and Information Agency, Network Services and IT Infrastructure, SATCOM Service Area Owner. “By leveraging the Viasat VISION software, NATO network operators have gained more control over communications stations from a single terminal, simplifying operations and increasing the readiness of today’s warfighter.”
“This NATO upgrade was fielded on time and under budget—further demonstrating the value of Viasat’s agile business models and deep customer knowledge,” said Ken Peterman, president, Government Systems, Viasat. “By working closely to understand NATO’s most urgent needs, Viasat was able to deliver a cost-effective, scalable and interoperable technology capability needed to support emerging mission demands and help NATO warfighters maintain communications at the tactical edge.”
The Viasat VISION platform provides a single, user-friendly network management interface for legacy DAMA and IW services, inclusive of the ability to locally or remotely manage and control ground station networks, monitor status and system performance, track event/alarm management situations and add/remove services when missions change. By enabling interoperability between DAMA and IW platforms, NATO can double its channel efficiency without additional investment in the UHF space segment. This optimization doubles the number of users, giving more warfighters access to reliable, high-quality, resilient voice and data communications.
