By Emelie Rutherford
The Air Force plans to deliver a study to Congress this spring on whether to rework Transformational Satellite (TSAT) program, a review spurred by plans to add a fourth Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellite, a top service official said.
Questions have been raised on Capitol Hill about delays in the TSAT program, and the service has indicated the planned 2018 launch date is in question.
Gen. Robert Kehler, commander of Air Force Space Command (AFSPC), told reporters yesterday at a Defense Writers Group breakfast in Washington that Air Force officials are aiding the TSAT analysis, which he said is a “DoD study in order to provide the answers that the Department of Defense is looking for.”
“I can’t tell you what that will result in,” he said. “I can tell you that there isn’t a lot of new ground being plowed here. What we know for sure is that the warfighter needs for TSAT remain.”
The congressional call to add a fourth AEHF satellite was prompted by concerns about the pace of the TSAT technology and cost of the program–and then adding the fourth AEHF has spurred multiple questions about the pace of TSAT, Kehler said.
“All of those things together lead us, and lead the department, to make a decision to come back this spring, do another assessment of TSAT–whether or not the program is structured correctly, whether the timing of the program is right, and how this should now fit together in light of the insertion of a fourth AEHF,” Kehler said. “We owe those answers to Congress this spring. We’ve been asked to provide those answers prior to the time that they mark up.”
Teams led by Boeing [BA] and Lockheed Martin [LMT] are competing for the TSAT effort, which is intended to provide secure, high-bandwidth communications to users who are on the move around the world.
The Army’s forthcoming Future Combat System (FCS) is among the programs that plan to use TSAT satellites for communications.
Kehler said he views the most important warfighter need for TSAT as “protecting communications on the move…getting protected communications farther and farther and farther forward, and farther and farther and farther down in the echelons that could be out there in contact.”
“We are mindful of that, we understand that that’s a warfighting concern, and that remains our number-one issue as we walk into this review,” he said.
Lawmakers in February said they are concerned about the effects of a $4 billion cut to the TSAT effort in the Pentagon’s long-term budget (Defense Daily, Feb. 28).
Meanwhile, adding the fourth AEHF resulted in a cost breach for that program, Kehler said. Air Force Secretary Michael Wynne recently alerted Congress that AEHF costs exceeded 15 percent of the effort’s baseline.
AEHF, a follow-on to the Milstar system, is a joint service satellite communications system intended to provide global, secure, and jam-resistant communications for military ground, sea, and air assets. It is being developed by Lockheed Martin and partners including Northrop Grumman [NOC].
“The cost breach is really an issue of now coming back in and having to upgrade some parts and do some other things since we had not planned on going to a fourth satellite,” Kehler said.
The first AEHF satellite will launch “within the next year,” he said, adding he has “high confidence that we’re going to get there.”
Kehler said the increases in protected communications that will result from AEHF “are expected to be phenomenal.”
“I believe that program is in good shape, heading toward a first launch, and we will do what Congress told us to do last year, which is to fly a fourth [satellite], at that is now in the plan,” Kehler said.
He said AEHF is a piece of “what’s about to be a quantum increase in capability in the military satellite communications constellation.”
The first of six planned Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) satellites has been launched, helping to increase bandwidth available for warfighters, he said. Additional new space capabilities will be launched in the next 24 months, he said, noting recent space successes. There have been 58 successful launches in a row, and five years have passed without a premature on-orbit failure, he said.
“I am cautiously optimistic that we have turned a corner here in our ability to put these things on orbit and to make them work when they get there,” he said.