RAF Oakhanger

Infobox Military Unit
unit_name=RAF Oakhanger


caption=Station badge
dates=1966–2003
country=United Kingdom
branch=Royal Air Force
command_structure=RAF Odiham
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role=Communications
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motto="Ultra Tellurem Dico"
Latin:"I speak beyond the Earth"
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RAF Oakhanger was a Royal Air Force station in Hampshire split over three operational sites with accommodation in nearby Bordon. The main site and operations centre was near the village of Oakhanger with two other sites nearby. The parent station for administrative purposes was RAF Odiham.

RAF Oakhanger was the home of 1001 Signal Unit, responsible for supporting satellite communications services for the British Armed Forces worldwide. The unit was made up of four sub-units; Space Operations, Ground Operations, Telemetry and Control and Support with subordinate detachments based at RAF Rudloe Manor, RAF Colerne and Defford. Command and Control of the system was conducted from Oakhanger, with a planning unit based at Rudloe Manor, co-located with No1 Signal Unit and Controller Defence Communication Network. The Colerne and Defford detachments provided a ground anchoring capability for the communications spacecraft. The Defford detachment was managed by the Defence Evaluation and Research Agency, later QinetiQ.

Space Squadron was responsible for flying a constellation of Skynet satellites, up to the fourth iteration of six space vehicles which supported Army, Royal Navy and Royal Air Force units. The space vehicles were controlled on a permanent basis from Oakhanger with command and control traffic being passed from one of the three ground stations. Space Squadron also controlled the flight of space vehicles on behalf of NATO, with an earth station at the nearby NATO ground terminal. The constellation comprised geosynchronous satellites, providing Earth coverage and higher power coverage over Northern Europe.

Ground services took responsibility for planning the routing of traffic via the space vehicles, from a number of locations in the United Kingdom to either stationary ground terminals such as Germany, Cyprus, Ascension Island and the Falkland Islands or tactical ground terminals, mounted in ships or vehicles and operated by Tactical Communications Wing, 30 Signal Regiment, 16 Signal Regiment, 264 (SAS) Signal Squadron or the Royal Marines Signal Squadrons.

Support to British military satellite communications was outsourced to Paradigm Secure Communications in 2003 in a Private Finance Initiative arrangement and the base was decommissioned and handed over to Paradigm at that time.

The sites are now used to support the Skynet 5 constellation launched on behalf of Paradigm.