In This Article:
Viasat, Inc. VSAT recently announced that it has collaborated with the U.S. Department of Defense and supported the maritime autonomous system experiment conducted by the AUKUS coalition (United States, Australia and the U.K.) during a trilateral exercise at New South Wales in Australia. It is part of the Maritime Big Play initiative, whose objective is to conduct trilateral exercises focused on ensuring interoperability, improving operational capabilities and expanding the use of maritime autonomous systems. Military strategy worldwide is going through a transformative phase as uncrewed, autonomous vehicles are gaining popularity across air, maritime and ground operations.
In the recently conducted experiment, VSAT provided a NetAgility Software Defined Networking platform that ensures simplified management of network and radio devices. The company’s Multidomain Uncrewed Secure Integrated Communications (MUSIC) powered by the NetAgility platform connected different uncrewed autonomous vehicles such as sub-surface vessels, uncrewed surface platforms and more. This ensured smooth communication across the whole setup. In addition, a VSAT commercial satellite, cellular, MOJO-Next Tactical Data Link gateway was used to ensure seamless compatibility of devices and sensors from different partners of the coalition.
Will VSAT Stock Benefit From The Venture?
Viasat’s MUSIC and MOJO Next created a robust communication infrastructure that enabled the AUKUS coalition network to efficiently share position location information, situational updates and command and control messages across all platforms. These advanced capabilities can provide significant advantages in diverse operational environments. The successful venture underscores state of the art technological capabilities and reliability of VSAT solutions.
The use of autonomous devices is expected to be more prevalent in the defense sector worldwide for improved battlefield awareness and decision-making. These emerging market trends present solid growth potential for Viasat's comprehensive tactical network solutions portfolio.
Viasat is also ramping up investments in the development of its revolutionary ViaSat-3 broadband communications platform, which will have nearly 10 times the bandwidth capacity of ViaSat-2. These satellites will be capable of covering one-third of the world, including all Americas. The ViaSat-3 platform will help form a global broadband network with sufficient network capacity to allow better consumer choices with an affordable, high-quality, high-speed Internet and video streaming service. In a nutshell, Viasat has garnered enough economics of scale and scope to serve vast emerging markets in South America, Africa, the Middle East and Western Asia.
However, intensifying competition from other major industry players, such as AT&T, Comtech, Starlink, and DISH Network, is impeding net sales.