Raytheon wins $228 million GPS ground system contract OCX is being built to command and control Lockheed Martin’s GPS III satellites. (Lockheed Martin) WASHINGTON The U.S. Space Force awarded Raytheon Intelligence & Space a $228 million contract for the follow-on control system for the GPS satellite constellation. The contract awarded April 30 extends Raytheon’s work on a new ground system for the GPS constellation known as the Next Generation Operational Control System (OCX). The company already delivered Block 0 and is working on Blocks 1 and 2. This contract expands the company’s work to Block 3F, which will incorporate regional military protection and command and control for the future GPS III follow-on satellites.
“Clearly, this is
not what Congress intended,” said one former DoD official. “They wanted
one person in charge, and made it the new Assistant Secretary of the Air Force and even strengthened that position to merge the SAE (legal authority to put things on contract), with a mandate to fix Architecture and Integration.”
Response to the re-organization plans from former DoD officials, acquisition experts and sources close to Congress ranged from confusion to frustration to skepticism. Some, for example, said it doesn’t seem to do much more than change the nameplate on the Space and Missile System Center’s door in Los Angeles.
CLARIFICATION/UPDATE:
To reflect that the SDA Tracking Layer satellites will be able to directly tip and queue other OPIR satellites in future; and the resumption of the program.
WASHINGTON: The $4.9 billion contract to produce three Next-Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared (Next-Gen OPIR) missile warning satellites seems to fly in the face of loudly touted Air and Space Force efforts to embrace open standards and cut the number of ground stations, receivers and antennas, experts said.
Instead, the new contract awarded to Lockheed Martin includes bespoke ground systems and sensor processing software raising questions in particular about how the data collected eventually will be shared with the Space Development Agency’s ballistic and hypersonic missile tracking sats.
By
Theresa Hitchens on December 18, 2020 at 7:01 AM
Wideband Global SATCOM satellite, Space Force image
WASHINGTON: The Space Force is preparing to launch a new effort to manage military and commercial satellite communications networks and link them to ensure troops in the field are always connected, even in the face of enemy jamming. This next stage in the rapid prototyping program is focused on ensuring 24/7 SATCOM availability for future All-Domain Operations (ADO).
Persistent access to SATCOM will be critical to providing Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2), a key enabler of ADO, Space Force officials say.
The SATCOM Enterprise Management and Control Program (SATCOM EM&C) is “about assuring the availability of satellite communication services in a way that we can adapt to an environment that is contested,” Maj. Gen. Kim Crider, Space Force acting chief technology innovation officer, told me in an interview yesterday. “And, certainly, the Joint Force dep
1)
Join the Space Enterprise Consortium (SpEC). He describes it as “a purpose-built consortium that values partnerships between government, traditional industry partners, and non-traditional partners like academia, small businesses and startups” that’s grown to more than 440 members in three years.
At the end of the interview, Gen. Thompson notes that he’s working on expanding the deployment of SpEC’s funds to reach more “game-changing technologies that those non-traditional small businesses and startups are bringing to SpEC.
2)
Watch for Space Pitch Days. The next event is in the spring of 2021. These pitch days give startups an inside track to government contracts. Apparently, after the first event held with the Air Force, which Gen. Thompson hosted, contracts were offered within three minutes of the pitches.