Mary-Louise Hoffman
Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman have received separate contracts to conduct readiness feasibility studies for the development of an 11th and succeeding GPS III space vehicles for the U.S. Air Force.
Each GPS III SV11+ Phase 1 Production Readiness Feasibility Assessment contract has a 26-month base value of $5 million and two six-month options worth up to $1 million combined, the Air Force’s Space and Missile Systems Center said Thursday
The contracts were awarded four months after the service branch posted the solicitation for proposals on the FedBizOpps website.
“The scope of these contracts include insight into each of the contractor’s readiness efforts in preparation for the Phase 2 competition for production SVs and includes access to design artifacts as well as a demonstration of navigation payload capability,” the Space and Missile Systems Center noted.
Lockheed Martin was awarded the contract to build eight GPS III satellites and works with Exelis on the satellite navigation technology.
The Air Force aims to build GPS III Space Vehicle 11 and successors via the current GPS III SV01–08 technical baseline and integrate nuclear detonation detection system, search-and-rescue and laser retro-reflector array government-furnished equipment hosted payloads into the space vehicles.
Follow-on space vehicles will also be designed with unified S-band compliance and regional military protection systems.
