Navy makes $14.7 million order to L3Harris to provide military and commercial SATCOM for surface warships

Feb. 27, 2020
CBSP ULV gear provides terminal-to-shore, terminal-to-space, and terrestrial connectivity for commercial SATCOM, and redundancy for military SATCOM.

SAN DIEGO – Military communications experts at L3Harris Technologies Inc. will provide the U.S. Navy with high-bandwidth satellite communications (SATCOM) aboard naval surface warships in a new order announced Tuesday.

Officials of the Naval Information Warfare Systems Command in San Diego, are asking L3Harris in Melbourne, Fla., to provide for Commercial Broadband Satellite Program (CBSP) Unit Level Variant (ULV) hardware production units under terms of a $14.7 million order.

CBSP ULV provides terminal-to-shore, terminal-to-space, and terrestrial connectivity to increase throughput for commercial SATCOM, and redundancy for military SATCOM.

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The CBSP ULV is designed to provide fast data communications for small naval surface warships and support ships by operating in the X and Ku frequency bands for military and commercial satellites.

The terminal supports full-duplex communications and data rates as fast as 21.4 megabits per second using single channel per carrier modems and dynamic bandwidth modems.

CBSP ULV antennas provide IESS-601-standard G and MIL-STD-188-164A-compliant beam patterns using a 1.32-meter reflector mounted on a three-axis positioner enclosed inside a protective radome.

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The system's below-deck communications equipment on surface warships and support vessels sits in a shock- and vibration-isolated cabinet shielded from RF interference. This equipment consists of modems, a beacon receiver, terminal controller antenna-control unit, power conditioning, support equipment, and cables.

The system combines MD-1366 enhanced bandwidth efficient modem for static operations and the SLM-565A dSCP modem for dynamic operation. Equipment is hardened to the naval environment, and all control comes over a local area network vial a PC-based graphic user interface.

On this order L3Harris will do the work in Melbourne, Fla., and should be finished by January 2017. For more information contact L3Harris Technologies Inc. online at http://harris.com, or SPAWAR at www.spawar.navy.mil.

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