Spaceflight Now: Breaking News

Air Force selects contractor for GPS 3 study
U.S. AIR FORCE NEWS RELEASE
Posted: November 13, 2000

The Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center here announced the award of contracts to Boeing Co., Seal Beach, Calif., and Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Sunnyvale, Calif., in response to a request for proposals to conduct architecture studies for the Global Positioning System 3 Program.

The purpose of the studies is to assess GPS-system wide architectural alternatives to meet the operational requirements, reduce total ownership costs and provide flexibility and robustness to meet evolving military and civil requirements for the space-based navigation and timing system for the next 30 years.

"These contracts represent the first significant step in providing the next generation of navigation and timing system performance for the U.S. warfighter and civil users throughout the world," said Col. Douglas L. Loverro, GPS Joint Program Office director. "This also represents a strong continuing commitment by the U.S. Government and the DOD to this global utility."

The contractors were each awarded $16M fixed-price contracts for this 12-month System Architecture and Requirements Definition study effort. The results of the studies will be used to define the performance baseline for the Program Definition/Risk Reduction phase of GPS 3 modernization.

A separate, full and open competition for the PDRR phase is expected to be conducted in the fall of 2001. Contracts for the two-year long PDRR phase are planned to be awarded to two contractor teams in early CY 2002. At the end of the PDRR phase there will be a decision to select a single contractor team to complete the Engineering, Manufacturing and Development and production/deployment phase of the program.

Deployment of the GPS 3 satellites is expected to be in the CY 2009 timeframe.

As envisioned, key objectives of the GPS 3 system include:

  • The addition of two-new high power spot beam military-code (M-code) signals to the L-1 and L-2 channels that provide military users with significantly enhanced anti-jam capability to meet battlespace needs
  • The addition of two new civilian channels that provide navigation signals for civilian use in local, regional and national safety-of-life applications for improved position, navigation and timing knowledge. One of the new civil signals is expected to transmit higher power than the other two signals for improved reception worldwide.
  • Reduced lifecycle cost of the GPS ground control architecture