DOD awards $134M contract to SES for satellite communication services

The Defense Department awarded a $134 million contract to SES Space & Defense to provide secure satellite communication services, the company announced today.

Under the five-year contract, SES will be responsible for providing DOD with highly secure Global X-band SATCOM services, the company said in the announcement.

“SES Space & Defense believes the [blanket purchase agreement] is one of the foundation blocks in accelerating [military] SATCOM-COMSAT integration for the space enterprise,” SES Space & Defense President and CEO David Fields said.

“The U.S. Space Force established this contract as a mechanism to enable access to commercial X-band capacity globally for the DOD,” he added.

Additionally, SES has teamed up with several industry partners, including integrators, SATCOM and teleport operators, who will deliver Global X-Band satellite capacity, teleport and network services over a highly secure global terrestrial network and other ancillary services to align with DOD requirements, the announcement states.

Fields said by combining satellite capacity, SATCOM services can achieve the highest availability with redundant X-Band coverage and diverse gateway connectivity within space.

Further, SES will enhance the GovSat-1 satellite, a geostationary communications satellite operated by GovSat and dedicated to government and military missions.

The GovSat-1 will feature high-power X-band and Military Ka-band beams to provide secure satellite communications services, the company said.

The Space Force awarded the contract under the single BPA through Defense Information Systems Agency’s Defense Information Technology Contracting Organization, according to the announcement.