ST. LOUIS, Aug. 3 (UPI) -- The Boeing Co. and its partners are bidding for a key development phase of the TSAT program.
Boeing said in a statement Monday along with its TSAT industry partners it had presented a proposal to the U.S. Air Force "for the development and production phase of the Transformational Satellite Communications System Space Segment program."
"TEAM TSAT offers unique capability and experience to the U.S. Air Force," said Howard Chambers, vice president and general manager of Boeing Space and Intelligence Systems. "That value is based on our 25-year heritage providing military satellite communications and our best-of-industry team, which has successfully delivered the most capable terrestrial and satellite communications network systems in service today."
"Delivery of the proposal caps more than three years of work on the TSAT Space Segment Risk Reduction System Definition contract," the Boeing statement said. "During that time, Boeing has demonstrated TSAT's advanced capabilities and technology maturity through successful laser communications and Next Generation Processor Router demonstrations."
"Additional demonstrations across all key elements of the TSAT network culminated with the comprehensive, integrated, end-to-end demo at the Space Segment Design Review in April. These risk reduction efforts have confirmed compliance with standards, interoperability and mission-level performance," the company said.
The contract award decision is expected in November. If the Boeing team wins, it plans to make the TSAT at its satellite factory in El Segundo, Calif.
Boeing said its partners in the bid to win the contract were Cisco Systems, Hughes, IBM, Harris Corp., Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corp., LGS Innovations, Raytheon, General Dynamics C4S, L-3 Communications, BBN Technologies, EMS Technologies, Innovative Communications Engineering and SAIC.
