US DoD Awards Global X-Band Blanket Purchase Agreement

DRS Global Enterprise Solutions (GES), acquired and now part of SES’s wholly-owned subsidiary SES Space & Defense, has been awarded a five-year Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) for the provision of highly-secure Global X-band SATCOM services to US Department of Defense.

With an estimated value of $134 million, the single award BPA was awarded through Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA)’s Defense Information Technology Contracting Organization (DITCO) by the US Space Force.

To deliver a near-global solution, SES Space & Defense has partnered with several industry-leading players, including integrators, SATCOM and teleport operators. Together, the contracted satellite operators will deliver Global X-Band satellite capacity, teleport and network services over a highly secure global terrestrial network, and other ancillary services to meet enduring and emerging DoD requirements. 

To provide secure satellite communications service, SES Space & Defense will leverage the multi-mission GovSat-1 satellite, which features high-power X-band and Military Ka-band beams. GovSat-1 is a satellite operated by GovSat and is entirely dedicated to government and military missions.

“SES Space & Defense believes the BPA is one of the foundation blocks in accelerating MILSATCOM-COMSATCOM integration for the space enterprise. The US Space Force established this contract as a mechanism to enable access to commercial X-band capacity globally for the DoD,” said SES Space & Defense President and CEO David Fields. “We have partnered with industry-leading X-Band owners and operators as we understand the demand for secure, non-preemptible mission-assured capacity for critical operations. By combining satellite capacity, SATCOM services can achieve the highest availability with redundant X-Band coverage and diverse gateway connectivity within sovereign space.”  

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