OCCAR has taken a further step within the scope of the ESSOR Programme Stage 4 to provide the Participating States Germany, Finland, France, Spain, Poland and Italy interoperable and secure C2 communication capabilities. A key milestone was reached with the recent contract signature between the OCCAR-EA Director, Joachim Sucker, on behalf of the Participating States, and the President of a4ESSOR S.A.S., the joint venture composed of the Participating States industry leaders (Bittium, Thales, Rohde & Schwarz, Leonardo, Radmor, Indra).
This contract will not only enable the federation of radio network planning capabilities to configure and operate the ESSOR waveforms, but also, the security qualification of the national implementations is being performed in order to permit multinational radio networks to exchange information classified up to NATO RESTRICTED.
Furthermore, as the IOC deployment of ESSOR capabilities has already commenced within some nations, with others to be assumed to close the gap soon, ISS processes are to be defined and ramped up in order to ensure that the programme is capable of addressing the service needs within the scope of future programme stages.
Lastly, a wholistic demonstration using the ESSOR High Datarate Waveform (STANAG 5651) in conjunction with user-facing services is planned within the scope of complex operational field tests, planned to be performed in France in 2028 with five of the six Participating States taken part with up to eight different radios models provided by five different tactical radio vendors. Dedicated visitor days for the ESSOR PSs and NATO will be planned so stay tuned.
