A short report in the Chicago Tribune quotes Pentagon acquisition guru John Young as saying the Air Force will delay contract award for the Transformational Satellite Communications program. We reported same last week, when Gen. Robert Kehler, Air Force Space Command boss, acknowledged that the TSAT award likely would not go before year’s end. He said the precursor to TSAT, the Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellite program, will require recertification under the Nunn-McCurdy rule because of cost growth. However, Kehler said that he believes AEHF is now on the right track and that the Air Force would follow with the TSAT “program of record,” which he declared was now sound. He explained, “I think we bought down enough risk, particularly technical risk.”
The Space Force expects to award $905 million in contracts over the next five years through a new Maneuverable GEO program, which aims to form a commercial fleet of mobile communication satellites in geosynchronous orbit.
