The Air Force announced on June 8 that it was “terminating for convenience” its $2 billion contract with Lockheed Martin for the transformational satellite communications system mission operations system, or TMOS, for short. This information was included at the top of the Pentagon’s daily listing of major weapon systems contracts. The service said pulling the plug on this work is the result of the Defense Department’s decision to cancel the TSAT communications satellite program in Fiscal 2010. TMOS was essentially the brains of the TSAT architecture. It was the ground segment that would have coordinated the flow of information from the TSAT satellites into the US military’s warfighting networks. Lockheed Martin won the contract to develop TMOS in January 2006. Also present in the June 8 contract listings was the Air Force’s termination notice of the $21 million contract with Booz Allen Hamilton for TSAT engineering and integration work. The justification was the same. We haven’t seen any Air Force announcement yet that puts an end to the risk-reduction work that Lockheed and Boeing teams have been performing for the Air Force on TSAT-related technology. Both companies received contract extensions on their efforts last December—month’s before the TSAT program was canceled.
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.