The Air Force is debating whether its two remaining Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) spacecraft will be useful by the time they are launched, according to a high-ranking official.
“There’s a lot of people that say ‘Well, until you can prove otherwise that I don’t need to depend on this thing, we need to protect this thing,” Air Force Lt. Gen. Charles Davis, military deputy to the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition, told reporters yesterday during Defense Daily’s Open Architecture summit in Washington.
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| Air Force Lt. Gen. Charles Davis, military deputy, Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Acquisition. Photo: Air Force. |
DMSP has been collecting weather data for United States military operations for more than four decades, according to the Air Force. There are two remaining DMSP satellites to be launched. Satellite F20 is in storage at Lockheed Martin’s [LMT] Sunnyvale, Calif., facility while satellite F19 has been delivered to Vandenberg AFB, Calif., for its estimated March launch (Defense Daily, Aug. 12).
The Air Force said in a November 2012 fact sheet that two primary operational DMSP satellites are in polar orbits at about 450 nautical miles (nominal) at all times. The DMSP satellites also measure space environmental parameters such as local charged particles and electromagnetic fields to assess the impact of the ionosphere on ballistic-missile early warning radar systems and long-range communications.
The Air Force in July awarded Lockheed Martin a $102 million cost-plus-award-fee modification of the spacecraft integration and test contract for DMSP, according to a Defense Department statement. The contract action includes tasks associated with the revision of the launch dates for satellites F19 and F20 and the re-phasing of the spacecraft integration and test contract consistent with the revised launch dates, DoD said. The contract runs through fiscal year 2022.
The last DMSP satellite to be launched, F18, took place in October 2009, according to NASA. The National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) provides command, control and communications (C3) for DMSP while the Air Force maintains funding responsibility.
The Air Force, in its fiscal year 2014 budget request, proposed taking steps to sustain and extend DMSP (Defense Daily, April 12).