U.S. Space Systems Command last Friday released the draft request for proposals (RFP) for the planned medium-Earth orbit (MEO) space vehicles for future missile warning and tracking defense.
Currently, Space Systems Command (SSC) still expects to release a final RFP for the Epoch 2 effort the week of July 9 and make an award around March 2025.
The draft RFP notice says the schedule for the MEO Epochs Ground Operations and Integration effort is still delayed with an award expected in the third or fourth quarter of fiscal year 2025. The draft document was posted on SSC’s bidder’s library with notice given through the government’s Sam.gov procurement site.
A virtual mini-industry day is planned for April 29 and an in-person industry day will be held May 20-24 for vendors interested in being Epoch 2 prime contractors.
SSC previously awarded Epoch 1 contracts to Boeing’s [BA] Millennium Space Systems business unit and RTX [RTX]. Both companies have completed critical design reviews and are readying to being production for launch of their satellites at the end of 2026.
Epoch 2 is aimed at providing an initial warfighting capability for tracking hypersonic missiles.
We want to we want to get to the initial warfighting capability in epic two, which is tracking Global Access tracking for hypersonics.
The draft RFP says that SSC’s Epoch 2 team is still finalizing requirements around the satellite crosslink standard, the contract type, which will either be firm fixed price or fixed price incentive firm target, and backup satellite operations centers scope and location.
For the Epoch 1 satellites, each vendor is providing proprietary crosslinks that only allow Millennium spacecraft to communicate with each other and the same with RTX’s. SSC is reviewing the potential to expand the Space Development Agency’s optical crosslink standard that enables communications between different vendors’ satellites in low-Earth orbit for use in MEO but wants industry feedback on whether this is doable for Epoch 2 with an eye to maintaining schedule.