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Military unveils £200m next-generation comms network
Falcon takes flight

By Jo Best

Published: Friday 31 March 2006

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) has signed a deal with BAE Systems Integrated Systems Technologies for a new £200m military communications network.

The network, to be known as Falcon, is designed to give senior military commanders a high-speed, air portable network with 10 times the throughput of the current systems it is set to replace.

One of the networks which will eventually be replaced by Falcon is the army's Ptarmigan, a system which consists of trunk switches connected by satellite and multi-channel radio relay links that provides voice, data, telegraph and fax communications. Ptarmigan was also provided by BAE Systems.

According to the MoD, the introduction of Falcon will mean a smaller number of Royal Signals operators will be needed than for the current systems such as Ptarmigan.

The system will be deployed from 2010.