Babcock Awards the German Company Rohde & Schwarz a Contract to Implement HF Military Messaging in the UK

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Munich, Dec 11, 2013 - The R&S MMHS message handling system from Rohde & Schwarz will be an essential part of the UK Ministry of Defense’s naval communications network at their Forest Moor, Kinloss and overseas sites.

The contract will be part of the UK MoD’s defense high frequency communications service project (DHFCS). DHFCS is a public-private partnership (PPP) that was awarded to Babcock in 2003 for a 15 year period. The purpose of the project is to deliver strategic beyond-line-of-site high frequency (HF) and low frequency (LF) communications services to the three branches of the armed forces.

The R&S MMHS message handling system from Rohde & Schwarz is the company’s latest state-of-the-art military message handling system to be implemented in a NATO broadcast and ship-shore environment. The R&S MMHS is in line with STANAG 4406 Ed. 2 and covers broadband and radio communications as defined in Annex E of STANAG 4406 both on land and via satellite.

The project currently uses the ACP127 messaging service. The R&S MMHS and its integrated ACP127 gateway facilitate the continued use of the existing service. The benefit for Babcock is the ability to provide a future-ready IP-based communications service to the UK MoD for both ship-shore and maritime rear link. The new system offers several advantages in terms of a reduction in operational costs. The operator will now be able to exchange messages with attachments and benefit from automatic transparent conversion between ACP127, STANAG 5066 e-mail and STANAG 4406 Annex E.

In order to provide system redundancy and increase availability, the new Rohde & Schwarz message handling system will be installed at two network control stations, namely Forest Moor and Kinloss. The three overseas locations are the Falkland Islands, Ascension Island and Cyprus. The overseas sites will provide additional coverage and will be controlled via an IP-based WAN.

Rohde & Schwarz has worked closely with Babcock, demonstrating system capability and reliability and providing a high degree of engineering support during an extended evaluation period. The resulting partnership will allow Babcock to maintain high system availability as a UK MoD service provider.




Rohde & Schwarz

Rohde & Schwarz is an independent group of companies specializing in electronics. It is a leading supplier of solutions in the fields of test and measurement, broadcasting, radiomonitoring and radiolocation, as well as secure communications. Established almost 80 years ago, Rohde & Schwarz has a global presence and a dedicated service network in over 70 countries. It has approx. 8700 employees and achieved a net revenue of € 1.8 billion (US$ 2.3 billion) in fiscal year 2011/2012 (July 2011 to June 2012). Company headquarters are in Munich, Germany.

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Posted  December 11, 2013