24 - Space-Library

Space and Intelligence Systems already has delivered three WGS
satellites and has three more in production.
http://boxer.senate.gov/en/press/photos.cfm?start=141
“We have completed all the non-recurring engineering on the
program, and if a procurement for a recurrent satellite was
conducted on a commercial basis, we could bring down the cost
further,” Craig R. Cooning, general manager of Boeing Space and
Intelligence Systems, said. “It seems to us that this is the
moment to be taking advantage of those savings. And do you
know of any operator that has Ka- and Ku-band rights in the
region? I don’t.” Cooning said that to bring down the cost of a
WGS satellite as far as possible, the Air Force would need to
waive many of the usual procedures it imposes on industry,
WGS satellite being built. Credit: Boeing photo
A seventh spacecraft and long-lead components for an eighth
were part of a $1.1 billion contract with the U.S. Air Force,
announced Sept. 9. The contract, which includes launches as well
as an option for a ninth WGS, does not spell out the cost of
building another WGS satellite that is nearly identical to the
previous six. At the same time as it has been preparing the WGS
follow-on contract, U.S. defense authorities have been trying to
sell the U.S. Congress on a novel idea for securing satellite
bandwidth for the U.S. Central Command in the Middle East,
South and Central Asia and North Africa. The U.S. Defense
Information Systems Agency (DISA) has argued that its
which add considerable costs to the program and which, he said,
are not needed given the maturity of the WGS system. Handling
a WGS procurement at this point in the program, and adopting
commercial procedures with lighter customer oversight, could
end up with a satellite that costs less than $300 million. “How
much do you think it would cost to purchase a satellite with
WGS’s capabilities on the commercial market?” Cooning asked.
Boeing and Bethesda, Md.-based Lockheed Martin have been
proposing that, to accommodate the U.S. defense budget to
leaner times, defense procurement adopt practices from the
commercial sector including leaner program management and
bulk purchases.
Advanced Satcom Services in a Single Theater (ASSIST)
proposal represents a smarter way for the U.S. military to
purchase satellite capacity. Instead of building its own satellite,
the Defense Department would order a commercial satellite
operator to provide a certain amount of Ku- and Ka-band
capacity in the region over the 15-year life of a satellite for $440
million. Commercial satellite operators have said none of them
has access to sufficient Ka- or Ku-band frequency in the region
to give DISA what it wants, especially given that DISA has asked
that the satellite bandwidth be available by December 2014. That
alone may have made ASSIST a nonstarter. But Boeing officials
said even the economics of ASSIST can be bested by the
at 50th
http://www.satnews.com/cgi-bin/story.cgi?number=1519546951&method=print#
Boeing is also turning greater attention to the commercial
satellite market to compensate at least partially for the expected
downturn in defense orders. Cooning said that five years ago,
purchase of an identical WGS satellite.
Cooning
Boeing’s commercial satellite business represented perhaps 10
percent of its revenue. In 2011 that figure is expected to be
about 16 percent, rising to 26 percent in 2012 as the company
digests multi-satellite orders for its newly designed 702b satellite
platform. Lockheed Martin officials said here that they too are
taking a fresh look at the commercial satellite market, but the
company has not yet been as aggressive as Boeing in pursuing
commercial orders.
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