Jane Edwards
Kelly Hammett, head of the Space Rapid Capabilities Office, said BlueHalo demonstrated its phased-array antenna system in late August and is set to make an initial delivery of the first unit by the spring of 2025 to help the U.S. Space Force upgrade its Satellite Control Network, Breaking Defense reported Monday.
In May 2022, the Space Force awarded BlueHalo a potential $1.4 billion other transaction authority agreement to demonstrate and deliver a multiband ground terminal, called BADGER, in support of the service branch’s Satellite Communication Augmentation Resource program.
BADGER, which is short for Broad Area Deployable Ground terminal enabling Resilient communication, is a deployable ground terminal that builds on BlueHalo’s Multi-band Software Defined Antenna, a phased-array technology that streamlines mission operations through agile beamforming tiles.
Col. Greg Hoffman of SpRCO’s Strategic Capabilities Acquisition Delta, said the inaugural BADGER demo “marks the first end-to-end test of the steerable phased array modules and software,”
“This sub-scale version of a full BADGER antenna and operations software contains the building blocks of the future units and reduces significant technical risk for the SCAR program,” Hoffman added.
