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Lockheed wins GPS III

Lockheed Martin will build the Air Force’s next-generation Global Positioning System navigation satellites, beating out Boeing for the $1.5 billion contract, the Pentagon confirmed late Thursday.

Lockheed is already building the GPS IIR-M satellites, the sixth of which was launched March 15. The last of the IIR-Ms, which will include the L5 demonstration signal for improvements to civil use, is expected to go up in late June or early July.

The GPS III contract — worth an estimated $1.5 billon but expected to grow — is for the development of two initial research and development satellites. Though considered “R and D birds,” they will be fully operational satellites, said Col. Dave Madden, commander of the Air Force’s Global Positioning Wing.

The new GPS constellation, with 500 times the transmission power of the current one, will resist jamming and provide better accuracy with faster clock update rates. Stronger signals will also benefit civilian agencies such as the Federal Aviation Administration, which is expected to use the satellites’ signals to improve air-traffic control in U.S. skies.

The contract includes five options of two space vehicles each for a total of 12 possible Block A satellites, including the two initial birds, with an overall price tag of $3.568 billion.

From there, the Air Force plans to buy eight Block B satellites, which will have cross-linking abilities, and 16 Block Cs, which will have “spotbeams,” allowing operators to boost the signal to 100 times greater than the Block Bs.

The Air Force has long said it intended to develop a long-term relationship with one prime contractor on GPS III — getting what could be as many as 36 spacecraft from the same vendor. While the current contract does provide the Pentagon more than on out should Lockheed run into problems, having only one GPS III vendor is still the intent, service officials said.

“Our primary intent is to establish a long-term relationship with a single prime,” Madden said. “However we kept the option available...it is kind of nice to have options.”

Still, it would seem the May 15 award leaves Boeing out in the cold on GPS for years to come.

“Boeing is disappointed by this loss, for we assembled a great team that submitted a solid proposal for the GPS III program,” said a company statement. “We look forward receiving the debrief from the United States Air Force.”

The decision was another in a string of blows to Boeing, which lost to Northrop Grumman and its European partner, EADS, in the $35 billion, 179-plane tanker contract earlier this year and has spent nearly two years fighting to hold onto the air service’s $15 billion combat search-and-rescue helicopter contract.

Boeing protested the tanker award — a highly unusual move for the aerospace giant – but when questioned about a GPS III protest, company officials simply stated they were awaiting the formal Air Force debrief.

Past performance was a major factor in the decision, service officials said, weighed equally with mission capability and risk.

Boeing is building the GPS IIF satellites, which will serve as the bridge between the current constellation and GPS III, but is it not going well. Though that contract was awarded in 1996, Boeing has not yet launched any satellites; in 2000, the Air Force shrank its order from 33 to 12. Program managers were replaced in 2006, after Boeing was forced to forfeit $21.4 million due to delays and cost overruns. The first of the IIF sats are now expected to launch more than three years behind the original June 2005 goal.

But the IIF contract was not the only facet of past performance.

“We looked at five years of past performance from both contractors ... probably upwards of 20 contracts to come up with overall picture of past performance,” Madden said.