§ Mr. Dalyellasked the Secretary of State for Defence whether he made representations to the United States of America during the Falklands campaign for the use of the American satellite Discus.
§ Mr. BlakerIt is assumed that the question refers to representations about the use of DSCS satellite facilities for the transmission of television pictures. Informal approaches were made at official level but were not pursued for operational reasons.
§ Mr. Dalyellasked the Secretary of State for Defence what schemes were evaluated to link the task force to a satellite to send pictures to the United Kingdom during the Falklands campaign; and what was the result of the evaluation of each scheme.
§ Mr. BlakerStill pictures were transmitted from the Task Force by means of the Inmarsat commercial satellite.164W This is a well established procedure on ships fitted with Inmarsat facilities and a Muirhead terminal. Once the necessary equipment reached the South Atlantic—via SS "Canberra"—still pictures of good quality were transmitted from the task force. The transmission of television pictures presented more problems and a number of schemes involving the use of both military and commercial satellite communications facilities were considered. In cooperation with BBC/ITV engineers a series of trials were conducted in the United Kingdom using the full range of military terminal and satellite equipment that. was available. For security reasons it is not possible to disclose the technical details of all these trials but although the initial trials proved it was technically possible to transmit mute black and white pictures of moderate quality by this means, the practical implementation of a television link with the task force in the South Atlantic was impossible because of the requirements of operational traffic and the fact that the ships of the task force were operating at the edge of the available military satellite's coverage where its performance was degraded and it could not transmit pictures. Television picture transmission via military communications was therefore not possible. The United Kingdom broadcasting organisations' satellite earth stations were also unsuitable for relaying television pictures from ships in the South Atlantic, and neither BBC nor ITV pursued the possibility of leasing a suitable commercial satellite terminal and transporting it to the South Atlantic.