While the space effort of Airbus Defence and Space appeared to have a “flat” year at least in terms of revenues (a 3 per cent decline to EUR€3.67 billion), there were a few satellite orders made in 2016 which were kept “under the radar” by the firm. These have now been revealed to spaceintelreport.com (Peter de Selding). These orders included an L-band military communications satellite for Indonesia called SatKomHan, and Egyptian military communications satellite called Navisat (with Thales Alenia Space providing the communications payload), an unannounced order for DirecTV-16. These add to orders for Eutelsat 5 West B, albeit with Orbital ATK providing the bus/platform and a recently announced military satellite order for South Korea, dubbed KMilSatcom, which is officially being built under Lockheed Martin under a military F-35 jet aircraft deal.
