Comtech showcases new Ultra SATCOM terminals at AUSA
Comtech have exhibited two of the company’s new Ultra family of Satellite Communications (SATCOM) terminals at this year’s Association of the United States Army (AUSA) exhibition being held in Washington DC between 8 October and 10 October.
Representatives from the company told Monch that the Ultra terminals are available in X-band (7.9 gigahertz/GHz to 8.4GHz uplink/7.25GHz to 7.75GHz downlink), Ku-band (14GHz uplink/10.9GHz to 12.75GHz downlink) and Ka-band (26.5GHz to 40GHz uplink/18GHz to 20GHz downlink). Crucially, the Ultra product series boasts an automatic tracking function, with company officials stating that this makes the products particularly suitable for installation on-board naval vessels. In fact, the firm has developed a specific maritime Ultra variant which is mounted on a fixed base, and also equipped with a cloth radome to protect the antenna from the elements. Comtech officials continued that this can provide a ship with an instant SATCOM capability, or an addition to the vessel’s organic SATCOM systems. The maritime Ultra variant can be installed in 45 minutes by two people.
Meanwhile, for land operations, Ultra terminals can be installed and activated in under ten minutes by one person. Two antenna sizes are available in 83 centimetres (32.3 inches) and 1.3 metre (4.2 feet) which can be affixed to a common back end. The X-band Ultra terminal has already been certified for use with X-band SATCOM services offered by the US Department of Defence’ Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) satellite constellation, and that testing of the Ultra terminals for Ka-band communications across the WGS has commenced and is expected to conclude in early 2019. While the company would not be drawn on specifics, representatives did add that sales of Ultra terminals to a number of customers had taken place.