DRS Global Enterprise Solutions (GES), acquired and now part of SES’s wholly-owned subsidiary SES Space & Defense, has been awarded a five-year X-Band Blanket Purchase Agreement (BPA) with an estimated value of USD 134 million in support of the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD). The single award BPA was awarded through Defense Information Systems Agency’s Defense Information Technology Contracting Organization by the U.S. 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 U.S. 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.”  

The Global X-Band BPA is the first integration services agreement awarded to SES Space & Defense since the acquisition of DRS GES by SES was finalized in August 2022. SES Space & Defense is dedicated to delivering the most trusted end-to-end global communications through a fully integrated Information and Communications Technology Ecosystem to the U.S. government and military.