TeleCommunication Systems (News - Alert) (TCS) reportedly announced that the U.S. Army has awarded it an additional $3.4 million to provide additional Secret Internet Protocol Router (SIPR) and Non-secure Internet Protocol Router (NIPR) Access Point (News - Alert) (SNAP) Very Small Aperture Terminal (VSAT) Satellite Systems.

The company says this extra bit of funding is an extension of an order that was announced in August 2008 by the U.S. Army Communications Electronics Command (CECOM) Life Cycle Management Command (LCMC), and this round now raises its own TCS total received SNAP funding to a little under $50 million. Estimates are that the total funding value for all vendors involved in this project is possibly more than $230 million.

Officials at the company claim that immediately on completion, the SNAP VSAT satellite systems are specifically meant to support the U.S. Army’s terrorist flush-out attempts in Afghanistan, and the end user group for the operations is the Combined Security Transition Command - Afghanistan (CSTC-A).

"TCS is committed to delivering the most reliable and secure communications systems in support of the Army's ongoing operations in Afghanistan," said Michael Bristol, senior vice president of government solutions for TCS. "We are honored to support our military, as and when called upon to do so, and intend to fulfill our obligations in a timely and cost-effective manner."

Official sources at TCS claim that the military hands out these funds in a systematic and incremental way after green signals are given by the U.S. Army Project Manager for the Warfighter Information Network-Tactical (PM WIN-T) Commercial Satellite Terminal Program (CSTP), which when the project first began had at its disposal $5 billion of the Army's World-Wide Satellite Systems (WWSS) contract fund amount. TCS says that this is the tenth instalment it has received till now.

The scope of the project is fairly large, claim officials, and requires TCS to supply nearly 1,500 terminals and supporting equipment to be deployed in various sizes and configurations over the next few years, along with up to 30 field support personnel, in order to fulfil the SNAP contract requirements.

The company says that it is using its proven SwiftLink technology for this US army VSAT project, and the entire solution delivers dual direction digital multimedia communications systems with encrypted voice, video and imagery data.

What makes the solution in demand, claim official sources is that it is modular, plug and play, has user friendly graphic user interfaces, can be shunted around on the field, and has interfaces between all RF and Baseband configurations that meet all the communication requirements of the customer.

Another aspect that helped TCS with the initial contract and subsequent continuation of incremental funding is the fact that over the last decade its has successfully executed projects for other government agencies such as the Department of Defense, Special Operations and Intelligence Communities, the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of State.

In October 2008, TCS had introduced the SwiftLink DVM-45 portable communications X-Band terminal, and the device’s sub-0.5 meter X-band Ultra Small Aperture Terminal provides deployed communications teams with the satellite services – a feature that’s designed to address the current scarcity of available Global Area Network, Broadband Global Area Network, and INMARSAT bandwidth. The lightweight SwiftLink DVM-45, with its 18-inch antenna, is easy to store, transport and can even be carried onto an airplane. Also, it is easy to assemble, requiring a set-up time of less than 10 minutes.