LAND & JOINT SYSTEMS

Press News archive September 2003 F@stnet Thales Communications B.V. has received an order from the Directie Materieel Koninklijke Landmacht (Directorate of Material Royal Netherlands Army) for the delivery of F@stnet radios. This radio, developed by Thales Communications in France, is the successor of the successful PR4G radio that has been supplied to the Netherlands Army and to many other customers. In the Netherlands, this radio is known as FM9000. The Netherlands was PR4G's first export country. And again, the Netherlands is the first country to which the F@stnet radio will be exported. The F@stnet radios will be deployed at the Support Centre in Ede for a number of tests and experiments in the scope of the Battlefield Management System (BMS) project. The objective of these tests is to optimize the speech and data flows and to make a more efficient use of BMS at the various operational levels, from platoon to brigade. F@stnet is characterised by a higher bandwidth than regular VHF radios for transmitting data and is able to simultaneously transmit data and speech. The radio unit also provides a Standard Internet Protocol (IP) interface so it can be easily connected to IP-based networks. Such an interface was a must for the Netherlands Army, as the communication infrastructure (TITAAN) in both static (headquarters, office) environments and tactical (command posts) environments, will be practically completely IP-based in the near future. Besides the F@stnet hardware, Thales Communications will supply technical support during the experiments.

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