BRUSSELS, 29 Sept. 2012. Astrium, a European space technology company, has been awarded a three year contract by the European Defense Agency (EDA) to provide commercial satellite communications capacity for European military needs. This contract will be managed by the EDA's procurement cell, the European Satellite Communications Procurement Cell (ESCPC).

Astrium Services will provide the EDA with satellite communications in commercial bands (C, Ku and Ka) for European military needs, and associated value added services including lease of terminals, anchoring and backhauling, worldwide. The ESCPC will allow the European Union member states to pool their needs, purchase, and even switch satellite communication capacity between themselves, in a coordinated manner, to help ensure access to satcom services. To date, five contributing member states (France, Italy, Poland, Romania and the United Kingdom) have decided to join the ESCPC to save costs on their commercial satcoms needs. Astrium Services will execute a complete service catalogue for the delivery of the upcoming orders placed by EDA on behalf of the contributing member states.

Satellite communications are critical operational enablers that link both command and control systems and intelligence, surveillance, reconnaissance (C4ISR) and targeting systems. Demand is growing significantly, and is partially caused by the widespread use of data rate hungry applications such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) on the battlefields, which require significant satcoms capacity for control and transmission of data from sensors.

Astrium Services offers a choice of frequency bands covering L, C, Ku, Ka, X and UHF, providing satellite-based military communication services to many armed forces in the world, including those of the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Canada, the United States and NATO.