13 May 02. Two European companies ORBITALE HOCHTECHNOLOGIE BREMEN -SYSTEM AG (OHB) and Thales have signed a Memorandum of Understanding on the occasion of ILA 2002 to join their skills in the area of STANAG 7085 High Rate (beyond 100 Mb/s) for Long Range Datalinks (beyond 200 km) for Air Reconnaissance Applications to allow Europe to fulfil its aerial reconnaissance needs.

With this joint initiative, called EDL (European Data Link), both companies will work together to offer common modes of interoperability to their customers, and will join their expertise to create a new “de facto” standard based on common product development. This will make profit of the latest technologies used in the next generation STANAG 7085 datalinks they have contracted for by the French and German MODs.

This agreement constitutes a very important step ahead to offer to the customers the next generation high performance STANAG 7085 datalink dedicated to European independency in aerial reconnaissance. This will allow the two companies to respond to the growing interoperability requirements of the Air reconnaissance programs planned in the coming years in Europe, NATO and World-wide, and also to optimize the Ground Segments for these applications.