Ramona Adams
The U.S. Air Force will meet with potential vendors to discuss its plans to update ground-based software of the U.S. military’s missile warning satellites, SpaceNews reported Monday.
A space enterprise consortium managed by the Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center is scheduled to host a conference this week in El Segundo, California, to provide information on the Future Operationally Resilient Ground Evolution program.
FORGE aims to modify the ground software architecture of the Space Based Infrared System satellite constellation into an open-systems platform that would be owned by the Air Force and updated with new technologies as they become available.
The program is part of the $173.5 million SBIRS modernization plan as well as an effort to encourage “non-traditional” vendors to participate in Air Force projects.
The military branch seeks to move SBIRS mission management, telemetry, tracking and satellite ground control to a common framework and use a contracting measure called “other transactions authority” to fund prototype designs of the common platform.
Another part of FORGE will focus on software that will help analyze and disseminate data from SBIRS satellites.
