The Boeing-Lockheed Martin team vying for the Small Diameter Bomb Increment II program successfully completed its first flight test of its SDB II last month, according to a June 6 Boeing release. An F-15E Strike Eagle flying out of Eglin AFB, Fla., launched the team’s SDB II, which then opened its control fins and wings and followed its planned mission. Boeing and Lockheed hope to win the sole source system design and development phase of the program in late 2009 over SDB II rival Raytheon.
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.