Elodie Collins
Sempre, in partnership with Instant Connect, has delivered an interoperable, resilient and secure communications capability to the Department of Defense.
Sempre said Thursday that work on a Tactical Funding Increase contract awarded in March by the U.S. Air Force Global Strike Command was completed ahead of schedule.
The TACFI contract, valued at $1.8 million, supports the development of a transportable network whose components – cellular 5G, a satellite gateway and a data center – are combined in an enclosure that can shield against electromagnetic pulses.
Instant Connect, the provider of push-to-talk communications technology, contributes to the program the tactical communications platform, which offers Land Mobile Radio bridging to connect users from separate installations over satellite.
Sempre CEO Rob Spalding, a retired U.S. Air Force brigadier general, said the communications system addresses the challenges he has encountered when he was a B-2 pilot.
“Our goal at Sempre is to deliver the resilient and secure infrastructure necessary for companies like Instant Connect to provide software-based interoperability capabilities for the DOD,” Spalding stated.
Sempre and Instant Connect already tested and proved the ability to deploy communication nodes within 10 minutes and provide warfighters access to secure communications and artificial intelligence or applications on the battlefield.
The companies have also proven an automatic failover to other connectivity sources such as satellite, fiber or free space optics to ensure continuous operations even when links are disrupted.
More demonstrations are expected to be conducted in the following weeks.
