The Air Force awarded teams led by Boeing and Lockheed Martin contract modifications up to $75 million to conduct additional risk-reduction work on their respective transformational communications satellite concepts, the Department of Defense announced June 6. Further, the new awards task each team to perform an industrial base impact study that assumes that USAF picks one of them to finish development and build the TSAT system anytime between July 1 and “six months thereafter through a total delay of 24 months.” The contractors will also develop concepts for two alternative requirements sets called “TSAT digital core” and “TSAT lite,” DOD said.
The Air Force and Boeing agreed to a nearly $2.4 billion contract for a new lot of KC-46 aerial tankers on Nov. 21. The deal, announced by the Pentagon, is for 15 new aircraft in Lot 11 at a cost of $2.389 billion—some $159 million per tail.