Turkey’s CTech to Delivers Drone Satellite Terminals to Military

Turkey’s CTech company is supplying SATCOM On-The-Move (SOTM) terminals for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) from July.

Aerial SOTM terminals will provide Turkish UAVs such as Bayraktar TB2 and Vestel Karayel with satellite communication capabilities. The company delivered 15 terminals in July, Anadolu Agency reported.

The SOTM terminals were developed as part of the project launched by Turkey's Defense Industries Presidency (SSB) in 2014. Later, the first domestic UAV SATCOM terminal was established in 2017.

CTech is presently developing broadband satellite communication systems for UAVs within the scope of the agreement with the Turkish Aerospace Industry (TAI) in 2018. It enables UAVs to transfer data with speed exceeding 20 megabits per second (Mbps) to the ground control station.

The company has provided TAI with 15 terminals and two MiniHUBs for the ANKA-S. he deliveries of 40 mobile terminals, a dozen mobile ground stations equipped with MiniHUBs and one HUB system will be completed by the end of 2021.

The systems will allow dozens of UAV operations to be performed simultaneously. These new and ultra-compact systems also provide satellite communication to armored land vehicles that have only radio and line-of-sight (LOS) communication and to relatively smaller tactical UAVs.