According to a statement released yesterday evening by Lockheed Martin, the Government Accountability Office has sustained the company’s second protest over the Air Force’s combat search and rescue aircraft replacement program. CSAR-X competitor Sikorsky also submitted a second protest. And, Congress has asked for much more information about the service’s award process. This latest setback makes it extremely unlikely that USAF could award a new contract by year’s end. Lockheed spokesman Mike Drake said the company is “pleased with the GAO decision and await information from the Air Force on its plans to implement the recommended corrective action.” He added that Lockheed is still ready to “support a schedule that will deliver this urgently needed capability to the warfighter as quickly as possible.”
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.