Boeing‘s [BA] Network and Space Systems business is working to keep its “tools sharp” to be competitive as opportunities come up in a volatile marketplace, the sector president said.
“It’s really a fun and exciting time to be in this business,” Roger Krone, president of Boeing Network and Space Systems, told reporters in a briefing ahead of the 27th National Space Symposium April 11-14 in Colorado Springs, Colo.
Krone, who previously spent time on Boeing’s aircraft side where program time is measured in years and sometimes in decades, finds this area very different.
“In our business, it’s a much shorter cycle business–smaller systems, sometimes we only build one of a kind, sometimes we actually get lucky like on our CSEL product we get to build 40,000” but that doesn’t happen often, he said.
“Because it’s a short cycle we kind of move up and down in the marketplace, with swings in the budget, and therefore there’s probably more volatility in this business than we’re used to seeing on the (Boeing military aircraft) side,” Krone said.
“We write lots of proposals. We go after competitions,” he said, pointing out that only half of Network and Space business comes from the Pentagon, outside the traditional services. “We have the only real commercial business on the (Boeing Defense Space and Security) side in the satellite marketplace, and that has allowed us to keep our tools sharp and to be competitive and to be integrated.”
The business is also moving strongly into some “adjacencies” the company sees as part of its strategy to increase the business and add value for the customer–areas such as information solutions, cyber, commercial satellite hosted payloads.
Brewster Shaw, vice president and general manager of the Space Exploration unit, said right now that operating unit is “laser focused” on flying the last two flights of the space shuttle system successfully. “We want to see it cross the finish line a winner,” he said.
However, once the wheels stop on the final shuttle landing, jobs will start to be lost. Shaw said some 800 jobs could end as the shuttle program winds down and as contracts run out from the cancellation of NASA’s Ares upper stage rocket work. Some jobs could transition to NASA’s new Space Launch System (SLS), but the space agency has yet to post requests for proposals. “The other thing I’m really worried about is the industrial-military base that supports our space systems, especially human-rated space systems,” Shaw said. “I believe that we are running the risk this summer if the wrong decisions are made of losing a great value to the nation’s military industrial base and the intellectual properties.”
Craig Cooning, vice president and general manager of Space and Intelligence Systems, said 2010 was successful, with five launches and, on Dec. 3, “we had a history-making landing for the first U.S. unmanned space plane to land autonomously out at the Vandenberg AFB, (Calif.).”
It also was a year of solid performance in winning new business in the commercial marketplace.
“Last year in the geosynchronous market, we captured 40 percent of the commercial satellite orders, and we tied with the number of satellites with six satellites total,” Cooning said. “We had three major contract awards in 18 months.”
Hosted Payloads is an area for future business growth, he said. “The demand for military satellite bandwidth is estimated to be about 20 gigabites per second today, which is twice the amount available,” Cooning said. “By 2019…that demand will reach about 50 gigabites per second and only 60 percent of that will be met.”
Thus, hosted payloads are a leading Boeing recommendation to address that bandwidth shortfall.
Additionally, in February the unit launched Boeing Commercial Satellite Services to work with the owners of satellite systems to market available bandwidth on active systems as well as to include hosted payloads on their future spacecraft.
The top priority for the Strategic Missile and Defense Systems unit is for the Ground-based Midcourse Defense program to get back into flight, said Greg Hyslop, vice president and general manager.
The unit is focused on dealing with the failure of the last mission and make sure they understand all the changes that need to go into the system and that they’re thoroughly tested.
There is a lot of proposal activity, Hyslop said. For example, the proposal for the GMD development and sustainment contract has been turned in. Boeing is partnered with Northrop Grumman [NOC] on this.
In another partnership with Northrop Grumman, Boeing has offered a proposal on the objective simulation framework, which is the future of the modeling and simulation backbone for ballistic missile defense.
“Clearly, missile defense tests are large complicated events and a good modeling and sim capability is absolutely essential for the future of the system,” he said. Both Boeing and Northrop Grumman provide major elements of the overall modeling and simulation backbone. They will be brought together in the future as part of the objective simulation.
The Missile Defense Agency also plans a future competition for the concept definition phase of the next generation Aegis missile, required in the later phases of the Phased Adaptive Approach to missile defense. This represents the next technological step in small diameter interceptors, he said. “We’re very interested in that program.”
Boeing also partners with Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) on the Arrow II missile-defense interceptors. In a joint development program with IAI, Boeing is working on the next-generation Arrow III.
In the strategic missile area, Boeing is interested in conventional prompt global strike, he said. “We think we’ve got a low risk alternative for that mission.”
John Hinshaw, vice president and general manager of Information Solutions–a new unit unveiled in January to more efficiently offer proven, military-grade, software-based solutions, said the new unit brought together four company areas: intelligence, cyber, logistics command and control and physical security.
Some of Boeing’s acquisitions over the past three years are now in this unit, such as Kestrel, exMeritus, RavenWing, DRT Technologies, and the LogC2-related acquisitions of Tapestry Solutions, and Narus.
All provide solutions by themselves, but leveraging them can add value for customers, Hinshaw said. “It’s a nice portfolio of solutions that we’ve proven both internally and externally and we’ll continue to look for new ways to leverage information technology as well as customers needs,” he said.