Viasat Makes Technology Enhancements to its Link 16 Expeditionary Tactical Gateway Products

July 22, 2020

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Viasat Inc. (NASDAQ: VSAT), a global communications company, announced today it added significant data storage and increased the processing power of its Link 16 expeditionary tactical gateway products. These technology improvements will help keep today's warfighter reliably connected to real-time air/ground geospatial intelligence and critical network functions when on the frontline of battle.

The enhancements were made as part of Viasat's Non-Developmental Item (NDI) business model, which delivers advanced capabilities significantly faster, at lower lifecycle costs and with lower risk to the customer when compared to traditional defense acquisition programs and timelines. By leveraging the NDI approach coupled with the gateways' open architecture, Viasat will keep pace with commercial technology advancements and ensure warfighters are equipped with the latest technology advancements.

Technical enhancements include:

• An eight-fold increase in data storage: Expanding storage from 512 gigabytes to 4 terabytes will help provide battlefield units in adverse conditions with more accurate situational awareness and targeting data to help fight near-peer adversaries that deploy sophisticated techniques that attempt to disable military forces' ability to communicate and collaborate.
• Greater processing power: By increasing gateway processing power it will be capable of delivering higher speeds and better performance with lower-power consumption for key application hosting and advanced network services on the battlespace. The additional processing power will be ideal for capabilities such as Viasat's Assured Resilient Integrated Network (ARIN), a solution delivering robust, secure communications for deployed tactical networks. Today, the processing power leverages PacStar's family of small form factor, modular router and server communications solutions.

"The technology enhancements to Viasat's expeditionary tactical gateway products are critical as we shift our focus to large-scale combat operations where we expect to fight more sophisticated threats in austere, denied, degraded and disrupted communications environments," said Andy Kessler, vice president and business area director, Next Generation Tactical Data Links, Viasat. "Our NDI approach enables our defense products to keep pace with the rapidly accelerating technology trajectories in the private sector. This model enables us to quickly and cost-effectively integrate significant technology enhancements into our products, keeping warfighters safer and more reliably-connected during tactical mission engagements."

Expeditionary tactical gateway products receiving the enhancement include Viasat's advanced Move Out / Jump Off (MOJO) Link 16 expeditionary tactical gateway system, which is the world's only compact, multi-network Link 16 communications system currently in use by all U.S. military services.

Source : ViaSat, Inc.