WASHINGTON — In an effort to speed capability for assured satellite communications (SATCOM) in the face of adversary jamming, the Space Force tapped five companies to demonstrate designs for a new encrypted constellation in geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO), the service announced Tuesday.
Under the Protected Tactical Satellite Communications – Global (PTS-G) program, Space Systems Command (SSC) has awarded indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contracts to Boeing, Viasat, Northrop Grumman, Astranis Space Technologies, and Intelsat (which recently was acquired by SES Global). The firms also were granted first delivery orders worth a total of $37.5 million.
“During the first delivery order, each awardee will mature a design and provide demonstrations based upon their established commercial product lines, to meet PTS-G requirements. The results of this initial order will inform subsequent competition for follow-on production orders,” the SSC announcement explained.
The Space Force’s fiscal 2026 budget request included nearly $240 million for PTS-G.
The new PTS-G awards represent a change in SSC’s acquisition strategy for anti-jam satellites, stemming from a newly-launched effort to reconsider whether ongoing development programs can more rapidly get baseline capabilities to the field by loosening requirements and instead using existing commercial technologies and services — with an eye to incremental improvements over time.
SSC launched PTS-G last March as a new tier in its Protected Anti-Jam Tactical SATCOM (PATS) family of systems, in hopes of starting operations in 2028. At the time, Space Force officials characterized the new satellites as augmenting the other satellite and ground-system elements of PATS, which all are based on use of an encrypted signal called the Protected Tactical Waveform (PTW). It was to serve as an interim service, bridging current commercial state of the art and the future high end capabilities being developed under another PATS subprogram called PTS-Resilient, or PTS-R.
The overarching PATS program began in 2018 to take over the tactical mission of the current Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellites, which today provide highly encrypted communications for both strategic and tactical needs. The goal of the multi-tiered effort (including satellites, PTW and ground systems) is to provide a resilient SATCOM architecture by using multiple types of satellites with better encryption that are dispersed over various orbits to flummox adversary jamming attempts.
Boeing and Northrop Grumman each won contract awards in 2020, worth $191 million and $253 million respectively, to develop prototype payloads for PATS under a subprogram called PTS-Prototype, or PTS-P. The PTS-P effort was then planned to lead into the PTS-R development program.
The Space Force on July 3 announced that it was canceling the competition for PTS-R to focus instead on “bringing the PTS-P prototypes into operation as quickly as possible.” Further, to highlight new acquisition approach, SSC changed the name of the PATS program to “Protected Tactical SATCOM Family of Systems.”
The other elements of the original PATS, however, remain unchanged. These include: Protected Tactical Enterprise Service ground system; Enterprise Management and Control; and the Air Force-Army Anti-Jam Modem.
The Pentagon’s FY26 research, development, test and evaluation budget submission to Congress requests a total of almost $686 million for the full Protected Tactical SATCOM Family of Services effort.
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Author: Theresa Hitchens
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