WASHINGTON, April 5 (UPI) -- A contract to Lockheed Martin to develop the U.S. military's Space-Based Infrared System has been revised for the ground development and delivery strategy.
The U.S. Defense Department said the modification -- valued at more than about $460.3 million -- will ultimately result in a more flexible ground infrastructure.
Current program funding is sufficient to execute the updated implementation, it said.
The modification delivers the next block of ground systems capability and is built upon a smart architecture that allows the four different mission areas to be segregated to achieve future sustainment efficiencies and enable independent evolution of capability.
The Block 10 delivery also provides an interface for other users as a critical step in ensuring that the SBIRS data are available to a large community of users for both real time activities as well offline analysis.
This upgraded ground system will be fielded at one primary and one backup government facility and it will replace the existing legacy operational ground system and other interim stand-alone software baselines, the Defense Department said.
The Block 10 system will perform integrated processing of data from SBIRS and its legacy DSP Overhead Persistent Infrared satellites. The system will release missile warning and battle space awareness messages to warfighters and will provide other relevant data to technical intelligence and missile defense users.
Work will be performed at Lockheed facilities in California. The contracting activity is the Space and Missile Systems Center, Los Angeles Air Force Base, Calif.
