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August 11, 2020 | International, Aerospace
After a hard-fought competition, ULA and SpaceX to remain military’s rocket launch providers
By: Valerie Insinna
WASHINGTON — United Launch Alliance and SpaceX have won the Space Force's next-generation rocket contract, locking the two companies in as the Defense Department's launch providers of choice for the foreseeable future.
ULA — a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Boeing — was awarded $337 million, while SpaceX will be getting $316 million for phase two of the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) program, the Pentagon announced Aug. 7. They beat out Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman.
Phase 2 of the NSSL program is the U.S. military's vehicle for ordering launch services from fiscal year 2022 to 2027. ULA is slated to get 60 percent of the manifest, with SpaceX getting the remainder.
“We don't think this is the last round of innovation that we're going to see,” Will Roper, the Air Force's acquisition executive, told reporters during an Aug. 7 roundtable. “Although we're excited for the next five years, we're looking ahead to ‘Phase 3' five years from now and wondering what new leap-ahead, lower-cost technologies might be on the forefront to make assured access to space not just assured, but cheaper.”
The award pays for the first three missions in 2022, which include two ULA launches and one for SpaceX. All are classified, Roper said.
There is no ceiling on the number of launches that the Pentagon can order in Phase 2, but Roper expects about 32 missions. Funding for those missions will be distributed in future task orders.
The NSSL Phase 2 award moves the U.S. military one step closer to eliminating its dependence on the Russian RD-180 engine, which is used in ULA's Atlas V rocket. The Defense Department has until 2022 to stop RD-180 procurement, and Roper said he was confident was on “a low risk path” to ensure it will meet that deadline.
For the Phase 2 SpaceX offered the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, which are both certified and in use. ULA proposed a new rocket, the Vulcan Centaur, which is under development and expected to make its maiden flight in 2021.
“Vulcan Centaur is the right choice for critical national security space missions and was purpose built to meet all of the requirements of our nation's space launch needs,” said Tory Bruno, ULA's president and CEO, said in a statement.
Blue Origin and Northrop Grumman were also in the process of creating new launch systems under a 2018 agreement with the Space and Missile Systems Center. That organization will now work with those companies on how to best halt the government's involvement in that development, Roper said.
“We will tie off the [launch service agreement] contracts as soon as we can, at a point that makes sense,” he said. “We want to make sure that work that's in flux, that we're able to document what the vendors have done. Where the government has rights to the data and the work, we want to make sure we retain them.”
Unless the companies protest the contract award, the next opportunity for Northrop, Blue Origin or other challengers to compete for national security launches is NSSL Phase 3, but the department's approach and timeline for that effort is still being determined.
“If funding were available for a Phase 3 launch service agreement, there's no prohibition on how early we could start Phase 3,” said Roper, who added that studies have shown “some strategic benefits for doing that sooner rather than later.”
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January 20, 2021 | International, Naval, C4ISR
Leonardo Seaspray AESA Maritime Radar to be Integrated on GA-ASI MQ-9B SeaGuardian
Rome January 18, 2021 - General Atomics Aeronautical Systems, Inc. (GA-ASI) is working with Leonardo to integrate the Leonardo Seaspray 7500E V2 radar into the centerline radar pod of its MQ-9B SeaGuardian remotely-piloted aircraft system (RPAS). The integration of this market-leading radar onto the SeaGuardian will enable persistent maritime ISR and is available to our international customer base. GA-ASI's MQ-9B is revolutionizing the long-endurance RPAS market by providing all-weather capability and compliance with STANAG-4671 (NATO airworthiness standard for Unmanned Aircraft Systems). These features, along with an operationally proven collision-avoidance radar, enables flexible operations in civil airspace. SeaGuardian has a multi-mode maritime surface-search radar with Inverse Synthetic Aperture Radar (ISAR) imaging mode, an Automatic Identification System (AIS) receiver, and a High-Definition - Full-Motion Video sensor equipped with optical and infrared cameras. This sensor suite, augmented by automatic track correlation and anomaly-detection algorithms, enables real-time detection and identification of surface vessels over thousands of square nautical miles. The Seaspray 7500E V2 radar is well-suited to the SeaGuardian mission set, using Active Electronically Scanned Array (AESA) technology to detect, track and classify hundreds of maritime contacts. The integration will also include an Open Mission Systems (OMS) approach, which enables the SeaGuardian and its sensor suite to offer operational and sustainment flexibility to end users. Numerous countries use Leonardo Seaspray E-scan radars and the company has utilized operational feedback from these customers to expand and optimize the radar's suite of advanced modes. These include Leonardo's patented small target detection capability, allowing it to spot extremely difficult targets such as submarine periscopes and shipwrecked individuals at long range, even in very stormy seas. A key discriminator of Leonardo's E-scan radars is their high reliability and fault tolerance that allows effective operation throughout a mission even if a number of individual radar modules fail. The Seaspray greatly enhances the capabilities of the MQ-9B and builds on the already close working partnership between GA-ASI and Leonardo. Earlier this year GA-ASI announced the completion of initial integration work of Leonardo's SAGE electronic surveillance unit onto the SeaGuardian, equipping the aircraft with the ability to gather intelligence information on maritime and land-based radar emitters over a wide area. Customers will be able to choose from a wide assortment of sensors and payloads on the SeaGuardian platform, with both Seaspray and SAGE as off-the-shelf sensor options. View source version on Leonardo: https://www.leonardocompany.com/en/press-release-detail/-/detail/18-01-2021-leonardo-seaspray-aesa-maritime-radar-to-be-integrated-on-ga-asi-mq-9b-seaguardian