Denis Couillard, Director of Solutions Development, Tactical Communications
When it comes to military comms, the Arctic might as well be another planet.
We're talking about a region that spans 8 million square miles and has almost no infrastructure. The few people who live there are scattered across remote areas, most with no fiber, no towers, limited power sources and no guarantee of satellite access. For defense forces operating in the region, it’s a worst-case scenario.
Forces need Beyond-Line-of-Sight (BLOS) communications that are fast to set up, resistant to weather and don’t rely on vulnerable infrastructure.
Why the Arctic is a comms nightmare
It’s not just about the cold, although that’s a factor. The bigger problem is the sheer scale of the territory and how little of it is covered by traditional networks. Fiber doesn’t stretch across the tundra. Towers are rare, and line-of-sight links are useless when you’re trying to talk across hundreds of unpopulated kilometers of ice fields, ridgelines and inaccessible areas.
Satellites? They’re great when they work, but that isn’t always the case. Weather, terrain masking and limited polar coverage can make SATCOM unreliable, especially near the North Pole or in contested conditions. Even the best systems can’t guarantee low latency or sustained high throughput in every Arctic location while also being vulnerable to jamming.
And that’s the point. The Arctic isn’t a place where you hope the connection works. It’s a place where it has to.
What troposcatter does differently
Troposcatter tech bypasses the usual limitations by bouncing microwave signals off the troposphere—the part of the atmosphere closest to Earth. With the right equipment, that scatter effect allows you to push data across 200 to 250 kilometers per hop without needing satellites or towers.
It’s fast. It’s hard to jam. And it works even when the environment is working against you.
Enter Archer: Troposcatter that’s built to deploy
Most legacy troposcatter systems were designed to be static. They needed big trucks, long setup times and trained teams to operate. That doesn’t cut it when you’re dropping into a polar outpost or moving with a dispersed team.
The Archer™ troposcatter system flips that script. It’s built for toolless assembly, automatic alignment and compact components that pack down into easy-to-move cases. With adequate power, you can go from transport to transmission in about 30 minutes. No tower. No crane. No waiting.
Designed for expeditionary operations
What makes Archer different isn’t just how fast it sets up. It’s how it performs once you’re live.
At its core, Archer is a high-bandwidth BLOS link that delivers consistent performance up to and beyond 200 kilometers, with throughput that supports voice, video and command and control data at speed. When you combine that with its quick deployment profile, it becomes a key enabler for expeditionary teams working without the luxury of an existing communication infrastructure.
In the Arctic, that matters. Whether you’re pushing sensor data from a remote site, coordinating with aircraft or moving updates between mobile command elements, Archer gives comms a trusted backbone.
Closing the gap
The Arctic has strategic importance, and as operations push deeper into polar regions, the need for flexible, resilient communications is only growing. If you’re operating in the Arctic—or anywhere the map gets wide and the infrastructure gets scarce—troposcatter isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s the link standing between your team and isolation.