Gilat pleased with ESA take-up as airlines roll out multi-orbit IFC

Gilat Satellite Networks has shipped hundreds of its Gilat Stellar Blu ‘Sidewinder’ multi-orbit electronically steerable antennas (ESA) to customers and the hardware “has gained about 300,000 flight hours,” Ron Levin, president, Gilat Commercial Division tells Runway Girl Network. The Israeli firm is in the process of ramping up capacity to support its customers.

In the commercial aviation space, SES is going great guns to fit the Sidewinder ESA to regional jets flown by Air Canada and American Airlines, and indeed at other airlines and on other aircraft types. For instance, its customer Royal Brunei Airlines today is launching multi-orbit IFC on select A320neo flights, as powered by SES’s GEO satellites and Eutelsat OneWeb LEO satellites. Panasonic Avionics, too, is equipping commercial aircraft with Sidewinder, having secured at least five airline customers.

“I think for a product like this — it just started shipping less than a year ago — it’s a very nice ramp up. And we’re getting good feedback from the customers, from the airlines,” Levin says of the roughly 350 units shipped as of 10 November. He adds that Gilat is also “very happy with the performance” of the product so far.

The orders appear to be flowing in. In February, Gilat held a backlog for the ESA of several hundred units. In August, SES confirmed to RGN that it has ordered hundreds of Sidewinder units to support retrofits and the first production run for Boeing’s linefit program. Gilat values the deal for ‘additional Sidewinder ESA terminals’ at $60 million.

Whilst Gilat isn’t currently detailing its backlog, it expects to be “more than double where we are now by mid-next year,” Levin confides.

Regarding Boeing linefit, Levin agrees with SES’s assessment that linefit installs of 737s will happen next year in support of Japan Airlines and Skymark. Gilat also remains “cautiously optimistic” that the single-beam ESA will break into either the Airbus BFE or SFE catalogues at some point in the future. It continues to “speak with Airbus on a regular basis, as we’ve always done.”

Multiple stakeholders say they approve of how Airbus is modifying the HBCplus SFE program as new NGSO network options enter the picture, but we await an update from the European airframer on the specifics of that evolution, hopefully in December.

LEO-only ESA to debut in BizAv

Gilat also continues to develop its in-house LEO-focused, ESR-2030Ku-branded ESA for Gogo (formerly Satcom Direct).

Gogo’s most high-profile LEO-based IFC solution is the OneWeb-supported Galileo product that uses Hughes’ LEO-only ESA hardware. Gogo shipped over 200 half-duplex (HDX) systems by 30 September. But according to Levin, Gogo, the exclusive distributor of ESR-2030Ku in business aviation and defense, sees a market for ESR-2030Ku, which also talks to OneWeb.

“We should be seeing commercial deployment starting I guess early next year,” says Levin. “We’re on track with that; that’s going quite well.”

Just how ESR-2030Ku will be positioned in the Gogo portfolio and where it will be deployed is a question for Gogo (that we’ve asked), but Levin says Gogo is “happy with the product, the performance, and do anticipate rolling out the product in volume.”

Interestingly, this week at the Dubai Airshow, Eutelsat Group CEO Jean-Francois Fallacher revealed that 500 aircraft are fitted with OneWeb LEO services. That includes both commercial and BizAv birds (with SES and Panasonic supporting multi-orbit LEO/GEO IFC for airlines, and Gogo supporting LEO-only IFC on business jets)

“Our aviation focused partners are also playing a key role, providing hardware options that allow aircraft of all sizes and mission profiles to benefit from high-speed internet services in the sky,” says Fallacher. “The result is here, and we are so happy with the fantastic feedback from airlines and passengers — and rising demand.”

Less demand for dual-beam ESA, some demand for LEO-only augment to traditional GEO antennas

Gilat did some previous development work on a dual-beam ESA architecture, the ESR-2040, but it didn’t fully develop the product. “We are seeing less demand for dual beam [ESA] on the market at this stage. It might come back later, but for now, we don’t see a real demand for that,” Levin says. [Viasat remains the most prominent aero ISP pursuing a dual-beam ESA.]

Gilat sees some opportunities to bring its ESR-2030Ku LEO-only ESA to the commercial sector to serve as an augment to existing GEO service (whether paired with ThinKom Solutions’ VICTS antenna or traditional gimbaled antenna hardware…facilitating the type of architecture being espoused by Panasonic for existing Ku-band GCS customers, wherein the IFEC giant will offer an Intellian LEO-only ESA.)

“We do see such opportunities in the market where, like you say, where customers would like to add a LEO component to an existing GEO service. We don’t see it as a huge market, but it is something that we’re seeing, demand that we’re seeing. So, there is opportunity,” says Levin.

GEO advantages

SpaceX’s Starlink service is obviously coming on strong in commercial aviation, recently winning full-fleet contracts with Emirates and IAG Group.

But with Starlink enjoying strong momentum, and on the heels of Amazon’s win of a portion of the JetBlue fleet for its forthcoming Project Kuiper service — and appreciating that Gilat is in fact selling a multi-orbit LEO/GEO ESA — does the firm still see GEO as being advantageous to aero including for IFC resiliency?

“So, I think GEO does have its advantages, and maybe, like you say, for resiliency, but also, GEO is much better at concentrating capacity over a single geographic area, like an airport or high-traffic flight zones. So, GEO definitely has its advantages. And at least, I would say in the short- to mid-term, in the next five to seven years, we see it playing a major role in effect on activity,” says Levin.

But with all the major players having access to LEO component (Viasat working with Telesat Lightspeed, SES inheriting the OneWeb relationship via its Intelsat buy, Panasonic accessing OneWeb), “it very well could be that in the longer term, a lot of those services move over to LEO, while leaving a small part for GEO where it makes sense. This is a longer-term play in my view.”

He adds:

Where GEO will definitely continue to play a major role is in the defense market that will want all the orbits and all the types of services… So the defense market, I think, will continue to use everything, and then same for commercial and business aviation, but maybe LEO will take a larger role there.

Gilat recently launched its Gilat Defense division after seeing huge budget growth in the defense market. “We weren’t really playing there, just maybe in a very small fraction of that market, and we do think we have the right solutions, the right products, for that market,” says Levin.

So Gilat Defense is a “growth engine” for the company and connectivity is part of that. Here, he sees opportunities for the ESR-2030Ku. “It’s a good fit there for special mission aircraft and ISR.” He also sees defense as a market for Sidewinder. “That’s maybe for larger planes, for head of state and VVIP, and some larger defense-use aircraft.”

In terms of nextgen ESA hardware, the Gilat executive confirms that metamaterials-based solutions are among the possibilities being explored.

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Featured image credited to Airbus