The U.S. Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center’s nuclear command, control and communications integration directorate at Hanscom AFB, Mass., has awarded Raytheon Technologies [RTX] a $625 million contract for Force Element Terminals (FETs) under the service’s Family of Advanced Beyond Line-of-Sight Terminals (FAB-T) program.
The contract “provides for equipment procurement, interim contractor support, depot activation, contractor logistics support, and studies as necessary to deliver the required capabilities and materials” for FAB-T, DoD said in a June 28 contract announcement.
“Work will be performed in Marlborough, Massachusetts and Largo, Florida, and is expected to be completed by June 30, 2034,” the announcement said.
In fiscal 2024, the Air Force wants to move FET from Middle Tier Acquisition to production with the goal of equipping the service’s 76 B-52 bombers with FET. The Air Force requests about $122 million in fiscal 2024 for the start of FET low-rate initial production.
The FETs are radiation-hardened satellite communications (SATCOM) terminals that are to permit the B-52 to transition from the use of Ultra High Frequency signals from the five Lockheed Martin [LMT] Military Strategic Tactical Relay (Milstar) satellites to signals from the six Lockheed Martin advanced extremely high frequency (AEHF) satellites (Defense Daily, Feb. 15).
The last Milstar–each of which has a design life of 10 years–launched in 2003.
On Jan. 16, 2020, Raytheon won a more than $442 million Air Force FET development contract for work through this August.
The Air Force’s FAB-T program also includes Raytheon Command Post Terminals (CPTs) to allow ground and air platforms to communicate with Milstar and AEHF. CPTs are to replace the existing Milstar-only terminals.
The Air Force requests about $25 million in fiscal 2024 for CPT.
A program decision memorandum in August 1999 by then Deputy Secretary of Defense John Hamre started FAB-T in August 1999. In September 2002, Boeing [BA] won the FAB-T award, but a decade later Raytheon won an alternative source award for FAB-T to spur competition. Raytheon then won the FAB-T contract in June 2014.
Last year’s president’s budget estimate for the total cost of CPT was nearly $1.9 billion, including 25 development CPTs by Boeing and Raytheon and 84 production CPTs, thus reflecting a terminal unit cost of $17 million.
The House Appropriations Committee said in its version of the fiscal 2024 defense bill that the committee expects the assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration to provide the committee “more frequent and timely updates on troubled programs,” including FAB-T (Defense Daily, June 27).
The FET is to be interoperable with AEHF, Enhanced Polar Systems – Recapitalization (EPS-R), and Evolved Strategic SATCOM (ESS) satellites using Extended Data Rate waveforms.
The EPS-R payloads payloads are to launch next year aboard a SpaceX rocket on Norway’s Arctic Satellite Broadband Mission. The U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command (SSC) said last month that Northrop Grumman [NOC] has delivered the control and planning segment (CAPS) for the EPS and future EPS-R payloads. EPS-R is to extend EPS’ military communications over the North Pole “until the fielding of the next-generation Protected Tactical SATCOM system expected to launch in the early 2030s,” per SSC.
The CAPS ground segment provides the software baseline for EPS and EPS-R.
Launched between 2010 and 2020, the AEHF constellation is to relay secure communications for the U.S. military, as well as partner nations including Canada, Australia, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.
AEHF is to have up to 10 times more capability than Milstar and five times the data transport rate.
Space Force plans to start moving away from the extended data rate AEHF satellites in the next decade to field the more resilient ESS constellation, but some lawmakers have said that the transition may create gaps in coverage (Defense Daily, Sept. 3, 2021).
Initial ESS satellites may deploy in fiscal 2030 to achieve an initial operational capability in fiscal 2032.