Space Systems Command’s Parallax Rising 2.2 Tabletop Exercise game play on Day 2 in El Segundo, California on August 22-24, 2023. The wargame touched on space operations in a "contested" environment (U.S. Space Force Photo)
By Frank Wolfe |
1 year ago |
05/24/2024

Boeing [BA] and Northrop Grumman [NOC] are in the running for a U.S. Space Force cost reimbursement contract this December to develop and build two Protected Tactical Satellite Communications-Resilient (PTS-R) satellites.

SSC’s program executive officer (PEO) for military communications and positioning, navigation, and timing (MilComm/PNT) in El Segundo, Calif., “intends to limit competition” to Boeing and Northrop Grumman, according to a May 23rd business notice

.

“The resultant contract will provide for two space vehicles, associated ground equipment, launch processing, on orbit testing, and contractor operations,” SSC said.

Cordell DeLaPena, a retired U.S. Air Force officer who also served at the National Reconnaissance Office, according to his bio, is the PEO for MilComm/PNT.

To justify the narrow field, SSC said that results of its market research “indicate that limiting competition to the Boeing Company and Northrop Grumman Corporation is justified in accordance with 10 U.S.C. § 2304(d)(1)(B), as implemented by Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 6.302-1(a)(2)(ii) because it is likely that award to any other sources would result in substantial duplication of cost to the government that is not expected to be recovered through further competition and unacceptable delays in fulfilling the agency’s requirements.”

The Space Force asks for nearly $349 million in fiscal 2025 for PTS prototype (PTS-P) payloads and PTS-R.

In addition to PTS-P and PTS-R, Space Force is requesting nearly $248 million in fiscal 2025 research and development funding for a new program, PTS-Global (PTS-G) (Defense Daily, March 14). The latter is to fill a gap between the “more focused” PTS-R and the “broadly-available but also the lower assured access capabilities provided by existing/emerging MILSATCOM and commercial services,” Space Force has said.

PTS-G is to use “lower complexity satellites” and military Ka-band and X-band frequencies, the service said.

Space Force and U.S. Strategic Command have proposed the PTS satellite concept and the Protected Tactical Enterprise Service (PTES) ground system to counter adversaries’ satellite jamming through the use of a Protected Tactical Waveform (PTW).

PTS satellites would be the follow-on to the Lockheed Martin [LMT] Advanced Extremely High Frequency communications satellite constellation.
In March, Boeing said that SSC had awarded the company a nearly $440 million contract to build the 12th Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) communications satellite, which is to deter jamming through the PTW with antenna nulling in the Ka-band (Defense Daily, March 6). WGS-12 is to connect military forces through the PTES ground system.
L3Harris [LHX] and RTX [RTX] are developing Protected Tactical Waveform (PTW)-capable modems under Space Force contracts awarded in March 2020–each with a value of up to $500 million.
Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall has said that “if you look at the Chinese space order of battle today–the Russians are a problem, but not as much–and you look at what that order of battle is gonna be in five years and you compare where we are and where we think we’ll be, we’ve really got a problem in space.”

“China has fielded a combination of anti-satellite and space-based targeting capabilities,” he said. “They’re threatening our space assets and our joint force, and we’ve gotta respond to that. We’re making good progress on the resiliency side of the equation–making our space assets more resilient. I’d like to move faster on that, but we’re making good progress. We’re making some progress on counter-space, but that’s another area in which I’d like to move more quickly.”