National Defence has awarded two contracts to General Dynamics Canada related to the Mercury Global military satellite project, part of Canada’s contribution to the Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) system.
The first, valued at $59.1 million, involves designing and building Mercury Global anchor stations while the second, valued at $8.5 million, is for the ongoing in-service support.
“The anchor stations will communicate with the WGS satellite constellation and link them to existing CAF communications infrastructure. Mercury Global will provide the CAF with assured access to wideband military satellite communications. The CAF will ultimately have access to bandwidth from the nine satellite constellation and utilize three anchor sites located in Eastern, Central and Western Canada,” DND said in a press release.
The costs of the WGS are shared among seven partner nations.