The Air Force in December awarded Lockheed Martin [LMT] and Raytheon [RTN] contracts nearly worth a combined $10 million to perform risk reduction studies for the highly-anticipated, multi-billion dollar Space Fence program, according to sources.
Lockheed Martin was awarded a $4.9 million contract Dec. 11, according to a notice posted on Federal Business Opportunities (FBO). An industry source told Defense Daily Thursday Raytheon also received a contract, worth around $4.8 million, for its own risk reduction study. The Air Force has not yet officially announced Raytheon’s contract award and did not return requests for comment by press time. Raytheon spokesman Michael Nachshen deferred comment to the Air Force. The two companies are battling it out for the $3.5 billion contract to build Space Fence, the Air Force’s next generation space surveillance radar.
The industry source said the contract award, called a “bridge contract,” serves two purposes: to study other applications that could use Space Fence’s capability and to allow contractors bidding on Space Fence to keep their program together and continue momentum. The contract award also allows the two companies to study Space Fence capability at high earth orbit (HEO), the source said, which is the furthest orbit from earth at more than 42,000 kilometers.
Steve Bruce, vice president for advanced systems at Lockheed Martin’s mission systems and training business, said Thursday in an email the company’s risk reduction study will describe and demonstrate the most effective manner in which Space Fence can be tasked to handle space debris, search in other orbital regimes and catalog objects to maximize space situational awareness (SSA). Bruce said the results of Lockheed Martin’s study, based on the company’s preliminary design review (PDR) of the system, will offer valuable insight into how Space Fence system capabilities will interact with other sensors in the space surveillance network.
Space Fence will provide up to two radars operating in the S-band frequency range and will replace the legacy Air Force Space Surveillance System (AFSSS) very high frequency (VHF) radar that performed detection of orbiting space objects. AFSSS, also known as VHF Fence, was officially shut down Sept. 30, according to Lori Thomas, president of Five River Services LLC the vendor for AFSSS. The Air Force in August said shutting down the AFSSS could save it nearly $14 million per year (Defense Daily, Aug. 14).
Space Fence will have one radar located at Kwajalein Atoll in the Marshall Islands and another, contingent on funding, located at an undetermined site. Space Fence will also be the primary means for un-cued detection and tracking of small objects in low earth and medium earth orbits. Initial operational capability (IOC) for Space Fence is estimated for 56 months, or nearly five years, after contract award with full operational capability (FOC) scheduled for three years after IOC, according to a November statement of work posted on FBO.
News of the new contracts awarded to Raytheon and Lockheed Martin was first reported by Space News.