Major General Tim Inshaw's visit to Paradigm's Hawthorn Site

In September Major General Tim Inshaw, Director of the ISS, accompanied by his Chief of Staff Colonel Gordon Rafferty visited Paradigm's Hawthorn site to open the newly refurbished Primary Spacecraft Operations Centre and accept delivery of the 44th and final Reacher Satellite Ground Terminal into the Skynet 5 programme.

As part of the highly successful Skynet 5 PFI, Paradigm owns and operates the Skynet 5 military communications satellite constellation that delivers secure strategic communications capability including video, voice and data to MoD overseas bases and operational deployments worldwide. The constellation consists of seven military grade satellites, three of which are cutting edge Skynet 5 and four are legacy Skynet 4 satellites.

The Hawthorn Main Operations Centre is located on a Paradigm site where 41 MoD and 230 Paradigm staff work to deliver the state of the art operational capability on a 24/7 basis.

To mark the recent refurbishment completion, General Inshaw attended the unveiling of a plaque by Dr Phil Wadey, Head of Space Directorate and Spacecraft Management Authority, Paradigm. The refurbishment which has been underway since the start of 2011 was completed in August and has been entirely funded by Paradigm.

During his visit, General Inshaw also marked the commissioning into service the 44th and final Reacher Terminal and watched a demonstration of some of the other equipment and services offered by Paradigm.

The first of these was the HITS Transportable, which is part of the High Integrity Telecommunications System (HITS) programme developed for UK national emergencies by the Cabinet Office Civil Contingencies Secretariat (CCS) in a partnership with Paradigm Secure Communications and the Ministry of Defence (MOD).

HITS is a resilient Skynet 5-based communications system capable of delivering secure data and voice communications completely independently from the main UK telephone network in the event of a major disaster or national emergency.
HITS Transportable Terminals can be deployed anywhere in England and Wales and will usually be driven to the relevant location although they can be carried by whatever transport is available. They are on call 24/7 and will be on the road within 6 hours of an emergency call out by the Cabinet Office.

The next demonstration was of the Micro VSAT terminal, developed in co-operation with Cobham Technical Services. The VSAT is a small, mobile tactical satcom terminal designed to enable high data rate communications over any X-band military satellite network. The terminal is contained within a single trolley type case, small enough to be taken on board a commercial aircraft.

FAST is the Flexible, Agile, Scalable and Transportable welfare cabin, part of the well established Paradigm WelComE programme that enables our service personnel to use the internet and call home from their forward bases. FAST has been designed by Paradigm at its own initiative and expense in response to the need to provide the WelComE services in smaller and less permanent locations like some of the Forward Operating Bases in Helmand.

After viewing all the demonstrations, General Inshaw was briefed by Dr Phil Wadey (Head of the Space Directorate) on the refurbished Spacecraft Operations Centre, and then formally opened the new SOC.