Rockwell Collins says it has teamed with Boeing and Honeywell to vie for the Air Force’s KC-10 aircraft modernization program. Last month, Rockwell got a $3.5 million contract to conduct a KC-10 AMP concept refinement study. Contracts for work on concept studies also have gone to Northrop Grumman, ($1.1 million), Smiths Aerospace ($1.3 million), L-3 Communications ($2.1 million), and ARINC Engineering ($1.9 million). Actual award of the AMP contract—designed to outfit the combo airlifter-tanker with enhanced digital avionics—by March 2008.
The Space Force is playing midwife to a new ecosystem of commercial satellite constellations providing alternatives to the service’s own Global Positioning Service from much closer to the Earth, making their signals more accurate and harder to jam.
