ViaSat Awarded US Government Protected Satcom Demonstration Contract

[Via Satellite 09-20-2016] ViaSat has received a cost-plus-incentive-fee contract worth $33,291,975 from the U.S. government to provide wideband jamming-proof communications to tactical users across both government and commercial satellites. The contract is for the Protected Tactical Service Field Demonstration (PTSFD) program and includes the development of a Protected Tactical Waveform (PTW) modem as well as an embedded cryptographic unit.

The PTSFD program aims to demonstrate the ability to provide wideband anti-jam communications to tactical users of the Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) constellation and commercial systems. According to ViaSat, the program enables the U.S. government to take advantage of Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) systems. PTSFD seeks to provide a higher degree of operational flexibility and greater amounts of bandwidth than is possible with the U.S. Air Force’s Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) constellation alone. ViaSat expects to complete this work by Sept. 30, 2020.

“This PTW modem, coupled with our ViaSat 3 ultra-high capacity class of satellites, uniquely positions ViaSat to provide global, interoperable communications to deployed warfighters with the most assured, resilient and fastest satellite service available,” said Ken Peterman, SVP and general manager of ViaSat’s Government Systems Division.