TSAT will provide thousands of users with wideband, highly mobile, beyond line-of-sight protected connectivity to support network-centric operations for the future battlefield.

More than 200 government representatives from the U.S. Air Force MILSATCOM Joint Program Office and user communities, including representatives from all services within the Department of Defense, recently completed a three-day Interim Space Segment Design Review (ISSDR) at Lockheed Martin Space Systems facilities in Sunnyvale, Calif.

During the review, the team reviewed in detail its planned architecture and design approach for the system, and summarized results of risk reduction efforts.

A highlight of the review was an extensive exhibit hall that featured brass board-level hardware, demonstrations of key technologies, and displays summarizing performance, mission scenarios, and user benefits.

The TSAT end-to-end network test bed was configured with three TSAT payloads, interconnected with a high-speed Synchronous Optical Network (SONET) backbone, two Special Operations satellite terminals and a Brigade Combat Team satellite terminal.

"The important review successfully demonstrated our technological readiness and how our integrated TSAT solution will bring significantly improved communications performance and unique transformational capabilities to the warfighter," said Rick Skinner, vice president, transformational communications for Lockheed Martin.

"We look forward to working with our customer in our collective effort to provide our men and women in uniform with the tools they need to prevail on tomorrow's asymmetric, distributed battlefield."

TSAT represents the next step toward transitioning the Department of Defense wideband and protected communications satellite architecture into a single network comprised of multiple satellite, ground, and user segment components.

The system ultimately will replace the Milstar and Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) programs and provide the Global Information Grid network extension to mobile warfighters; sensors; weapons; and communications, command and control nodes located on UAVs, piloted aircraft, on the ground, in the air, at sea or in space.

"A strong partnership between industry and government combined with a disciplined system engineering and risk management process explains the tremendous progress we've made," said Stuart Linsky, program manager, transformational communications for Northrop Grumman.

"It is most gratifying to see the users embrace our innovative TSAT space segment solutions and see for themselves that we are executing on the plan to deliver these critical, mission-enabling capabilities."

The Lockheed Martin/Northrop Grumman T-SAT team, which includes ViaSat, Rockwell Collins, General Dynamics Advanced Information Systems, L-3 Communications, Stratogis and Caspian Networks is currently working under a $514 million contract to conduct risk reduction demonstrations and system trade studies over a 32-month period.

This effort will culminate with a multi-billion dollar development contract to be awarded to a single contractor in 2006.

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