NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.–Despite the Air Force growing “increasingly concerned” over the status of its next-generation Global Positioning System (GPS) III positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) satellite system, the service’s space chief said yesterday he believes the program is still on decent footing.
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| Lockheed Martin’s GPS III Satellite Photo: Lockheed Martin |
Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) chief Gen. William Shelton said yesterday the GPS III program has run into manufacturing and process issues with the navigation payload.
“In terms of when that payload might deliver, we’re still not out of the woods quite yet,” Shelton said at the Air Force Association’s (AFA) annual conference here. Shelton added he didn’t have a “good, solid” delivery date for the navigation payload, but that the Air Force is “very close” to its “schedule margins” in terms when it might deliver.
“We think we’re within schedule and resource constraints now that we’re getting really close,” Shelton said.
Lockheed Martin [LMT], the prime GPS III contractor, said in June the navigation payload on the first GPS III satellite would be delivered to the company’s GPS processing facility near Denver later this year. The hosted nuclear detection system payload has already been delivered and mechanically integrated with the satellite remaining on schedule for flight-ready delivery to the Air Force in 2014. Exelis [XLS] is developing the navigation payload.
GPS III is an Air Force program that will replace aging GPS satellites in orbit, improving capability to meet the evolving demands of military, commercial and civilian users (Defense Daily, June 6).