The antennas will support the military Link 16 tactical communications data network
WASHINGTON – Redwire announced June 7 it won a contract to produce 42 tactical communications antennas for U.S. military satellites in low Earth orbit.
The Jacksonville, Florida-based space infrastructure company said it’s under contract to deliver 42 high-gain antennas over the next 18 months for an undisclosed national security customer.
The antennas will be integrated with Viasat’s Link 16 communications terminals. The Link 16 tactical data network is used by the U.S. military and NATO allies to exchange data between ships, aircraft and troops on land.
A Redwire spokesman said the company could not disclose the value of the contract or the specific customer, and could only say it’s a Defense Department prime contractor.
Based on a previous announcement, the customer is either York Space Systems or Lockheed Martin, both of which are prime contractors building satellites for DoD’s Space Development Agency. The agency plans to deploy a Transport Layer — a low Earth orbit mesh network that will send and receive wideband data to and from ground stations and mobile users.
Redwire in a January 2022 news release said it was under contract to deliver three L-band Link-16 helical antennas for the Space Development Agency’s Transport Layer Tranche 0. That earlier contract was with one of two satellite manufacturers — York Space and Lockheed Martin — that received contracts in August 2020 to build 10 Transport Layer satellites. Redwire did not specify which of the two satellite suppliers was the customer for the three antennas.
York Space Systems, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman in February won contracts from SDA to each produce 42 satellites for the Transport Layer Tranche 1.
The Link 16 antennas are important pieces of the Transport Layer satellites that have to be able to transmit and exchange data with all users of the Link 16 tactical data standard.
Redwire will produce high-gain antennas, a type of antenna with a narrow radio beam that is used to amplify weak satellite signals.
The company said the antennas will be manufactured at its Longmont, Colorado, facility.
The Link 16 antennas are designed and built by Deployable Solutions, formerly known as Roccor, a company acquired by Redwire.
Under a 2017 Small Business Innovation Research contract with the Air Force Research Laboratory Space Vehicles Directorate, Roccor developed a deployable L-band antenna that can receive and transmit Link 16 signals via satellite. The carbon-fiber antenna boom has been successfully deployed on commercial satellites.