Jane Edwards
Two teams led by Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Technologies have received prototype demonstration agreements from Space Systems Command to support the ground segment of the Evolved Strategic SATCOM program.
The command said Tuesday it awarded the agreements through the Space Enterprise Consortium’s other transaction authority in support of the ESS Ground Resilient Integration & Framework for Operational segment, which leverages Software Acquisition Pathway contracts for mission capability subsets in Agile software sprints.
Each prototype agreement is valued at approximately $30 million.
ESS is a hybrid space program of the Department of Defense meant to provide satellite communications capability for the nuclear command, control and communications mission across all operational environments. Boeing and Northrop Grumman perform prototyping demonstration work under the program’s ESS Space segment.
“By openly competing modular software applications that integrate into a cyber-resilient architecture, awarding contracts to teams of vendors working together to create a cohesive industry ecosystem, and developing it all with side-by-side end-user engagement, we ensure that not only will capability be delivered faster, but we’d also enable the ground system to be more easily updated in the future,” said Lt. Col. Laila Barasha, GRIFFON materiel leader.
Companies under the Lockheed-led team are Stratagem, Integrity-Communications-Solutions, Infinity and BAE Systems.
Team Raytheon includes Dell, Seed Innovations, Infinity, Kratos Defense & Security Solutions, Northrop, Rocket Communications, Parsons, Polaris Alpha, Quantum Research, Koverse, Caliola Engineering, Kythera, Northstrat, Optimal, RKF Engineering and Ascension Engineering.
