iDirect wins SATCOM contracts in expanding Asian market

The satellite communications (SATCOM) company iDirect – a subsidiary of Singapore-based ST Engineering – has won a recent series of defence and government contracts. Announced on 28 July were five awards – two in Southeast Asia and three in Europe.

One Southeast Asian military “is reinforcing the communications backbone for its naval forces, enabling real-time situational awareness and coordinated command operations across coastal and open-water environments through automatic beam switching, open antenna to modem interface protocol interoperability, advanced spread-spectrum capabilities, and transmission security-enabled security,” the company shared.

Asian Military Review understands this contract is to an archipelagic nation, possibly Indonesia.

The statement continued, “The other is modernising protected mobility and fixed communications with defence-grade security, multilayer resilience, global network management, and rapidly deployable low-SWaP [size, weight and power] terminals that support flexible, secure operations across tactical and fixed sites.”

Not mentioned in the press release was another SATCOM contract awarded by a Central Asian client.

Growing defence demand

Acquired by ST Engineering in 2005, iDirect provides technology, software and integration solutions that enable customers to optimise their SATCOM networks. With militaries around the world seeking sovereign SATCOM solutions and building next-generation satellite networks, the company believes it is well placed for future growth.

Keith Blanchet, Vice President of Global Government, ST Engineering iDirect, told AMR that the commercial sector currently represents around 70% of its business compared to the government and defence sector, but he expects this will reduce to less than half within 3-4 years.

This trend is exacerbated by the rise of commercial entities such as Starlink and Amazon Leo, which “have shrunk the overall addressable market” for all the traditional players.

“What that has produced is now a business that’s focusing more and more on the government defence sector, where countries where Starlink is not necessarily palatable or desired. And also there’s a rise of sovereign thinking in the SATCOM domain and space domain overall.” Blanchet outlined that this is “something that plays very well into the direction of ST Engineering”.

Blanchet described the new Southeast Asian contracts as “highly strategic”, with the nations opting “to go in the direction of multi-orbit, software-defined ground segments, trusting the roadmap that ST Engineering iDirect are proposing to them over the next few years. They may not all be acquiring the same capability today because of budgets, etc., but they’re buying into the idea of being able to adapt over that roadmap.”

Integration and Intuition

Blanchet described iDirect as a “player that collates or brings together the satellite operators and different satellite constellations that exist out there. The whole concept of multi-orbit networks is key, and that now gets us ahead of most of the other players since we took an early start there. Now we’re able to demonstrate and not just talk about it.”

Amongst ST Engineering iDirect’s specialties are ground segment SATCOM networks. Blanchet explained satellites are software-defined nowadays to keep them up to date, and “that means the ground segment, whatever receives the signal from the satellite, needs to be able to not only provide that full capacity on the ground now, but evolve over time as well”.

“What we do is we offer the market the flexibility of all the strengths of those different constellations and orbits, and to bring them all together on the ground.” This matches the requirements of militaries who want diversity, redundancy and resilience.

One of iDirect’s key products is Intuition, and the company is currently developing a new version specifically for government and defence clients. Blanchet could not say when it will be ready, other than “very soon”. He believes the new version will immediately accelerate adoption by government customers.

Asian sovereignty

Sovereignty is particularly important in Asia, as regional countries do not collaborate as they do in NATO, for instance. “So essentially, we’re a glue that brings together the various constellations and satellite options that are out there,” the Canadian executive explained.

iDirect does not offer full-stack sovereign ownership, which is the old way of countries owning and managing every component in their satellite chain. Rather, the firm promotes the concept of sovereign control, where nations can localise the technologies important to them but still make use of iDirect’s ability to integrate everything.

iDirect already serves 20 of 27 EU nations, and 24 of 32 NATO member states. As for Asia, Blanchet said “most countries in Asia are customers of ours at some level, whether on the commercial side or on the defence side”.

Blanchet predicted the Asia-Pacific market will “double very quickly” and it may even triple in coming years.

He added that growth will be even faster if Australia gets its SPA9102 sovereign SATCOM tender under way. After initially selecting Lockheed Martin Australia to support this project with its proposed geostationary Earth orbit network, Canberra halted it in 2024.

Last year, Australia resurrected the project, and a request for tender is actually expected this month. It is now seeking a multi-orbit-style constellation, and one that partially leverages commercial solutions in order to reduce costs. This approach is totally up iDirect’s alley, and it is eager to participate in this SATCOM tender.

by Gordon Arthur