The Norwegian Defence Procurement Division has awarded a contract to Thales to deliver a new satellite communications system for the five Norwegian Nansen class frigates.

This comprehensive contract will significantly enhance the effectiveness of the Nansen class frigates, enabling them to communicate over secure, high bandwidth satellite links, both with other national and allied force elements. Thales will deliver a complete SATCOM solution for the Nansen class frigates, including state-of-the art military SHF and an advanced dual band Ka/Ku solution engineered to give the best trade-off between performance and installation constraints on-board the frigates. The Thales solution is based on the sea-proven SURFSAT Naval SATCOM family, with leading-edge multi-band and stabilised system, using multiple transmission systems ensuring seamless on-board integration. The terminals will be fitted with a range of modems including M21e, the most advanced SATCOM Electronic Protected Measures (EPM) modem from Thales. Based on the EPM modems product line already selected by NATO, M21e is a software modem fully compliant with NATO STANAG 4606 ensuring interoperability among allied forces. It provides a future oriented full IP adaptive waveform and on-board Electronic Support Measures (ESM) compatibility, in a very compact housing easy to integrate on-board. The Norwegian Navy will thus benefit from high data rate SATCOM links enhancing the availability, confidentiality and integrity of voice and data information against potential jamming, interference and intrusion threats.