COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — A top Air Force official defended the service’s handling of its launch range infrastructure after a tracking radar issue in March delayed the launch of a spy satellite 16 days.
“If you look at the history of how many times has the range been the culprit in slipping the launch, I think you’ll find it’s a pretty small amount of the time,” Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (AFSMC) chief Lt. Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski told reporters here Wednesday at the National Space Symposium.
A tracking radar at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Fla., in March became inoperable due to overheating, delaying the Air Force’s launch of the National Reconnaissance Office’s (NRO) NROL-67 satellite from its originally-scheduled March 25 launch. Liftoff eventually took place April 10.
Pawlikowski said the tracking radar is, indeed, part of the range infrastructure, but the Air Force in the future wants to move to Global Positioning System (GPS) tracking of launch vehicles to eliminate the redundancy of tracking radars. Tracking radars follow the flight path of launch vehicles to ensure safety.
The Air Force is in the middle of a program called Launch and Test Range System Integrated Support Contract (LISC), a follow-on to the Spacelift Range System Contract (SLRSC). LISC is to cover ranges at both Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg AFB, Calif. The acquisition program for LISC started in July 2009. The last government action on
Federal Business Opportunities (FBO) was responses to industry feedback in March 2013.
LISC is supposed to cover 12 subsystems at the ranges, including: command destruct, communications, data handling, range safety, optics, planning and scheduling, radar, surveillance, timing and sequence, telemetry, weather and modeling and simulation (M&S), according to a FBO notice. LISC will implement performance-based logistics for space (PBL-S) contract incentives, which Pawlikowski emphasized Wednesday, that will ensure both ranges are “green,” or operational, throughout each launch and test campaign at the lowest price over time.
“When we look at where we’re going to make our investment, our investment is going to be in making sure that every dollar we spend contributes to keeping the range green,” Pawlikowski said.
The Air Force did not respond Thursday to a request for the status of LISC, which is estimated to be worth billions of dollars. The trio of InDyne, Lockheed Martin [LMT] and URS Corporation [URS] said last year they intended to bid for LISC as a team known as Consolidated Range Enterprise (CoRE). Another joint venture known as IBL JV LLC, composed of Exelis [XLS], BAE Systems and L-3 Communications [LLL] said last year it would also bid for LISC (Defense Daily, June 13).