American fighters need anti-jamming communications, and space forces plan to secure them to spend hundreds of millions.
As part of its efforts, the service has established a protected tactical SATCOM program to build safe battlefield communications through satellites. Space Force has already awarded contracts with Defense Prime Boeing and Northrop Grumman to develop prototype payloads for satellites heading into distant Earth sphere orbit.
The program is currently in a new phase. On Tuesday, Space Force awarded five additional contracts for the design and demonstration of dedicated satellites to provide jam-resistant communications to tactical forces. The winners include previous winners, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Vysat and Intersat, as well as San Francisco-based venture-back startup Astris, who is a relative rookie. (Intelsat will purchase satellite buses from K2 Space, another venture-backed startup.)
The first award is relatively small, totaling $37.3 million. However, the program has a $4 billion award cap, allowing winners to sign on to a much more lucrative defense agreement.
Each company will develop an architecture until January 2026. Space Force will then choose one design and award the additional contract for the first satellite, launched in 2028.
The PTS-G contract is a notable deviation from how the military has historically raised Earth-Measuring Satellites, usually with a very long timeline from contract awards to launches, costing hundreds of millions to over $1 billion per spacecraft.
In contrast, space forces are clearly trying to leverage commercial participants’ speed and encourage competition by selecting multiple vendors early in the program.
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“Our PTS-G agreement will transform the way SSCs acquire SATCOM capabilities for fighter jets,” Cordel de Lapena Jr., executive officer of the program, said in a news release. “The incorporation of commercial baseline designs to meet military capabilities will significantly increase the speed and efficiency of the Space Force and add the ability to meet new threats.”
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