Intelsat's UAV support operations

Intelsat General Corporation, an indirect, wholly-owned subsidiary of Intelsat, Ltd., was awarded a multi-million dollar contract to provide bandwidth to an affiliate of European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), to support the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) surveillance operations of the French Air Force in Afghanistan. As part of the contract, Intelsat repositioned the steerable Ku-band spot beams on its IS-601 satellite in order to provide both a low-data-rate link to control the UAV in flight and a high-data-rate link to collect real-time video and photos from the aircraft for use by troops deployed in the field.