DESCARTES STCA contract awarded

France's DESCARTES STCA contract is to be fulfilled by a consortium consisting of ENGIE Ineo as prime contractor and Airbus Defence and Space as co-contractor, Airbus announced on 6 February.

The eight year contract, which will see the delivery of a high-availability communications network to control the air operations of the French Ministry of Defence (MoD), is part of the DESCARTES programme.

DESCARTES STCA will provide forces involved in air operations with an Internet-Protocol based, secure, cross-site telephone service to allow military missions to be carried out consistently with civil air traffic control and NATO networks, and to contribute to the implementation of the single European sky.

Under the contract, the consortium will design, deploy and support the operational telephone system and the security system meeting air traffic control's very high availability and resilience requirements.

The network will be rolled out on around 60 sites in mainland France.

The French MoD is upgrading all infrastructure networks under the DESCARTES programme to meet increased bandwidth, service quality as well as cyber security requirements. The programme covers general use and highly secure and resilient networks that are able to operate in the event of a serious crisis, such as nuclear deterrence, joint services territorial organisation command, continuous air security and air traffic control communications.