By Marina Malenic
The Air Force still plans to award a multibillion dollar contract in the coming months for the next generation of secure military communications satellites, a top Air Force official said this week.
The service anticipates selecting either Boeing [BA] or Lockheed Martin [LMT] to build and launch the Transformation Satellite (TSAT) system to provide military users secure communications on the move, said Gen. Robert Kehler, chief of Air Force Space Command.
However, the service is still analyzing implications of moving ahead with TSAT for its Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite communications system.
“We think it is prudent for us to take a look at all of these factors together,” Kehler told reporters at the annual Air Force Association meeting in Washington.
Earlier this month, the Air Force informed Congress that the AEHF program had exceeded a 25 percent cost-growth cap and must be recertified by the Pentagon. The program cost grew by just over $2 billion to approximately $9.2 billion. Most of that overage was due to a congressionally mandated fourth satellite being added to the program after Lockheed Martin’s production line had been shut down (Defense Daily, Sept. 12).
TSAT is the follow-on system. Congress added the extra AEHF satellite because of concerns that there could be a capability gap if the TSAT program schedule slipped. However, Congress has made considerable cuts to TSAT (Defense Daily, Feb. 28).
Pentagon officials are now examining the two programs closely. Kehler said a revised plan is expected to emerge in the coming weeks.
The contractors, meanwhile, are proceeding with TSAT risk-reduction efforts leading up to a possible downselect in December.
“We continue to make progress with our customer on the risk reduction phase” of the program, Boeing TSAT space segment Program Director John Peterson told Defense Daily yesterday in a brief telephone interview.
“We are leveraging capabilities that we already have on-orbit and operational today,” he added.
Lockheed Martin and industry partner Northrop Grumman [NOC] yesterday announced the successful test of a deployable radiator system for TSAT. The High Performance Loop Heat Pipe (HP-LHP) Deployable Radiator System has been “demonstrated to significantly improve the heat dissipation capability over existing systems,” according to a statement released by Lockheed Martin.