Canada's EMS Satcom announced yesterday that its eNfusion line of Inmarsat-based satcoms data terminals is to be supplied for installation in US Army EUH-60 Black Hawk battlefield command helicopters.
Atlas Telecom Services of the US has been awarded a contract worth $2.5 million to procure and install the equipment.
In normal operations the EUH-60s fly with the roll-on/roll-off Army Airborne Command and Control System (A2C2S), a five-man suite of situation displays and communications equipment used to allow senior commanders to move forward from their ground headquarters while retaining a full electronic view of the battle. In the emerging network-centric environment, commanders using A2C2S have felt an increasing need of broadband communications.
The US Army's Aviation Applied Technology Directorate (AATD) Rapid Prototyping Division was tasked with developing and integrating a satcoms system able to meet the requirement and selected EMS Satcom's eNfusion HSD-128 high-speed data terminal, AMT-50 antenna and an off-the-shelf but custom-mounted radome.
"The new command and control requirements demand bandwidth that the older Army infrastructures can't supply," says Sean Gannon, principal avionics engineer at Science Applications International Corporation, which supported the programme with radio-frequency communications and electrical engineering expertise. "EMS Satcom's Inmarsat-based terminal provides enough bandwidth to securely carry multiple voice, video or data channels simultaneously."
The AMT-50 mechanically steered antenna is small and light enough to be mounted on the engine door.
Atlas Telecom Services of the US has been awarded a contract worth $2.5 million to procure and install the equipment.
In normal operations the EUH-60s fly with the roll-on/roll-off Army Airborne Command and Control System (A2C2S), a five-man suite of situation displays and communications equipment used to allow senior commanders to move forward from their ground headquarters while retaining a full electronic view of the battle. In the emerging network-centric environment, commanders using A2C2S have felt an increasing need of broadband communications.
The US Army's Aviation Applied Technology Directorate (AATD) Rapid Prototyping Division was tasked with developing and integrating a satcoms system able to meet the requirement and selected EMS Satcom's eNfusion HSD-128 high-speed data terminal, AMT-50 antenna and an off-the-shelf but custom-mounted radome.
"The new command and control requirements demand bandwidth that the older Army infrastructures can't supply," says Sean Gannon, principal avionics engineer at Science Applications International Corporation, which supported the programme with radio-frequency communications and electrical engineering expertise. "EMS Satcom's Inmarsat-based terminal provides enough bandwidth to securely carry multiple voice, video or data channels simultaneously."
The AMT-50 mechanically steered antenna is small and light enough to be mounted on the engine door.
Source: Flight Daily News
