Austria acquires new tactical radios from Thales

Thales SquadNet tactical radio to be delivered to the Austrian Army to support military modernisation. (Thales)

The Austrian Ministry of Defence (MoD) has signed a contract with Thales for the provision of its SquadNet tactical radio.

More than 2,500 radios will be delivered to the Austrian Army to support its digital transformation.

This is the second significant order for the radios, following a deal signed with Belgium, the company said.

Thales was unable to respond to Janes regarding delivery timeframes and the Belgian contract at the time of publication.

SquadNet is a small software-defined voice-only tactical radio that combines a Thales-developed waveform with built-in Global Positioning System (GPS), Bluetooth, and programmable encryption. The system operates in the 860–890 MHz frequency band, weighs 250 g, and has a point-to-point range of 2.5 km. This can be extended to 6 km in multihop relay mode.

Each radio can enable up to 100 talk groups over 50 channels with up to 50 users per channel and can access Wi-Fi as well as 3G and long-term evolution (LTE) mobile networks to extend communications globally via secure internet protocol (IP).