Officials at Travis AFB, Calif., have shelved plans for now to solicit ideas to develop a 19-megawatt solar energy project on the base’s 205-acre Cypress Lakes Golf Course. “The business case for the project was strong, but recreation facilities like the golf course have value for our Team Travis family beyond financial considerations and we must look at the whole picture when making these decisions,” said Col. James Vechery, boss of Travis’ 60th Air Mobility Wing, in a base release Tuesday. The project was conceived in partnership with the Air Force Real Property Agency under the Defense Department’s enhanced use lease program, which allows installations to lease non-excess real property to public or private developers. AFRPA and Travis representatives had presented the concept to would-be developers in November.
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.