The Air Force and its National Polar-Orbiting Environmental Satellite System cohorts—NOAA and NASA—have worked with prime contractor Northrop Grumman to restructure the budget and technology troubled program. It took a year’s effort, after DOD recertified the need for NPOESS, to devise a new plan that includes the “management controls and reporting requirements” that “will ensure strict oversight of the contractor,” according to a USAF statement. A new fee structure offers incentives based on cost, schedule, and performance. Northrop said in a release that it has met scheduled milestones “throughout the extensive planning effort,” keeping NPOESS “on cost and on schedule for the past 21 months.” The new schedule includes the sensor technology risk-reduction effort, called the NPOESS Preparatory Project, launch in 2009 and the first NPOESS satellite in 2013.
The Space Force should take bold, decisive steps—and soon—to develop the capabilities and architecture needed to support more flexible, dynamic operations in orbit and counter Chinese aggression and technological progress, according to a new report from AFA’s Mitchell Institute for Aerospace Studies.
