Boeing officials say the company has picked up work on a new Air Force space effort and additional work under its long-standing contract to build Global Positioning System satellites. The new work involves defining the next-generation communications payload for a polar-orbiting satellite under a $1.5 million Air Force contract. For the GPS program, Boeing will build three more Block IIF satellites under a $138 million option.
While U.S. defense officials have spent much of the past decade warning that China is the nation’s pacing threat and its People’s Liberation Army represents an urgent threat in the Indo-Pacific, several defense researchers are skeptical that the PLA has the human capital, the structural ability, or the political appetite…