Area Power bets on industrial entrants in $4B satcom contest

American warfighters want jam-proof communications, and the Area Power is planning to spend tons of of hundreds of thousands to make sure they’ve them.

As a part of that effort, the service established the Protected Tactical Satcom program to construct out safe battlefield communications by way of satellites. The Area Power has already awarded contracts to protection primes Boeing and Northrop Grumman to develop prototype payloads for satellites heading to far-away geostationary orbit.

Now, this system is getting into a brand new section. On Tuesday, the Area Power awarded 5 extra contracts for the design and demonstration of purpose-built satellites to supply jam-resistant comms to tactical forces. The winners embrace earlier winners Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Viasat, and Intelsat, plus a relative newcomer: Astranis, a venture-backed startup based mostly in San Francisco. (Intelsat will purchase its satellite tv for pc bus from K2 Area, one other venture-backed startup.)

The preliminary awards are comparatively small, totaling $37.3 million mixed. However this system has a $4 billion award ceiling, so the winners may signal on to a way more profitable protection deal.

Every agency will develop its architectures by January 2026. After that, the Area Power will choose one design and award a further contract for the primary satellite tv for pc, with a launch deliberate in 2028. Further manufacturing awards might be doled out, additionally in 2028.

The PTS-G contracts are a notable departure from how the army has traditionally procured geostationary satellites, which have usually had extraordinarily lengthy timelines from contract award to launch, and would price tons of of hundreds of thousands to over a billion {dollars} per spacecraft.

In distinction, the Area Power is clearly making an attempt to leverage the velocity of business entrants and encourage competitors by choosing a number of distributors for the preliminary section of this system.

“Our PTS-G contract transforms how SSC acquires SATCOM functionality for the warfighter,” program govt officer Cordell DeLaPena Jr. mentioned in a information launch. “The incorporation of business baseline designs to satisfy army functionality considerably enhances the Area Power’s velocity and effectivity so as to add functionality to satisfy rising threats.”