Viasat demonstrates high-capability expeditionary communications

Maritime June 3, 2021

Viasat Inc has showcased its ability to enable resilient and tactical cloud-based communications during the Naval Integration in Contested Environments (NICE) Advanced Naval Technology Exercise (ANTX).

The NICE ANTX event, led by the Naval Research & Development Enterprise (NR&DE), invited organisations from across industry, academia and government R&D to demonstrate emerging technologies that could be leveraged by the US Navy and US Marine Corps in support of Expeditionary Advanced Base Operations (EABO) and Littoral Operations in Contested Environments (LOCE).

During the exercise, Viasat proved methods to increase network capacity and resilience at the tactical edge, improving Situational Awareness (SA) and enabling advanced battlespace applications. Viasat demonstrated its ability to:

Enable secure ship-to-shore communications in a littoral environment;
Rapidly employ and manage agile communication nodes at all echelons, allowing access to the tactical cloud;
Enable Electronic Warfare Operations across distributed systems with Office of Naval Research ENDOR Future Naval Capability (FNC) and Viasat NetAgility™;
Provide dismounted leaders access to information and networks critical to maintain situational awareness; and
Implement an automated Primary, Alternate, Contingency, and Emergency (PACE) plan for increased resiliency, transport bonding orchestration, and management across all network nodes

“The US Navy and Marine Corps understand the importance of exploring technological innovations that can support critical operations in difficult contested environments,” said Craig Miller, president, Government Systems, Viasat. “At NICE ANTX, we demonstrated a diverse set of communication advancements—in an environment of emerging cyber and electronic warfare threats—and augmented existing military communication networks, tailored command and control capabilities at the tactical edge and provided advanced methods to deliver reliable, uninterrupted broadband connectivity through an enhanced on-the-move communications platform.”

Viasat demonstrated resilient ship-to-shore communications leveraging its Expeditionary Lightweight Integrated Tactical Edge (ELITE) kit and its roll-on/roll-off prototype G-18 Ku/Ka-band antenna to provide assured, satellite communications-on-the-move capability for maritime and ground-based platforms, allowing a commander to tailor their command and control (C2) capabilities to the mobility needs of the operation.

Viasat also showed its NetAgility Mobile Software Defined Networking (SDN) router, enabling greater resiliency by bonding and aggregating multiple communication pathways for automated traffic routing from the Tactical Operations Center to Small Form Factor sensor integration.

Finally, Viasat showcased the C2 gateway capabilities of the ELITE kit by simulating Link 16 tracks and disseminating them across all nodes in the network and to all dismounted warfighters via multiple Direct Line of Sight (DLOS) radio links.