Astrium Services and Thales Alenia Space have achieved the Initial System Acceptance (ISA) milestone, which was approved by the Al Yah Satellite Communications Company (Yahsat) and the United Arab Emirates Armed Forces. The system enables Yahsat to provide UAE Armed Forces with world class Mil-Ka satellite communications capability.

The ISA milestone included the delivery of the anchor station assets at the first Yahsat site in Abu Dhabi, as well as the transmission, telemetry and control facilities on the second site in Al Ain City. A number of end user terminals of various types were delivered with an extensive Network Management System.

Commenting on this achievement, Tareq Abdulraheem Al Hosani, CEO of Yahsat, said, “We are pleased with the job Astrium Services and Thales Alenia Space have delivered, which enabled us to provide state-of-the-art secure satellite communications services. We are confident both companies will continue the outstanding work to achieve the final system acceptance in six months.”

Aidan Joy, Executive Director of Astrium’s Secure Satcom Systems and Nathalie Smirnov, Thales Alenia Space Senior Vice President of Telecom System and Payload, commented, “This is a huge achievement for Astrium and TAS, which follows a test campaign over recent weeks and a final end-to-end demonstration to the UAE Armed Forces. Once again we have demonstrated our ability to plan and deliver an entire turnkey system from the satellites in orbit to the end user ground terminals – the whole team has done a fantastic job. The UAE now has a state-of-the-art secure satellite communications system that can be used for both commercial and military communication services.”

The state-of-the-art NMS facility provides remote control of all system hardware, delivering exceptional and instantaneous flexibility that reinforces the system’s secure communications capability. Yahsat’s second satellite has completed its ground testing and is ready for launch early in 2012.