of the first Milstar 2 satellite in a 1999 launch failure. The Advanced EHF system ultimately will replace the Milstar constellation, which is designed to provide secure, jam-proof command-and-control links to U.S. forces under all conditions.
The Advanced EHF team informed Pentagon officials recently that the first satellite likely will be at least six months late, Pentagon sources said. Further, Pentagon officials are now skeptical of the team’s ability to accelerate the program at all, the sources said.
That could lead to communications problems down the road for the Pentagon. In an interview last year, U.S. Army Lt. Gen. William Campbell, who at the time was director of information systems for command, control, communications and computers, said the Army suffers from a shortage of communications capacity that will grow unless programs like Advanced EHF remain on schedule. Campbell is now retired.
A Defense Department source said the Milstar constellation by itself could be overwhelmed by traffic in the coming years. That could hamper the massive data exchanges needed for things like strategic nuclear operations, missile defense and precision targeting, the source said.
Jacques Gansler, who served as Pentagon undersecretary of defense for acquisition, logistics and technology from 1997 through 2000, had expressed reservations about the teaming approach, but eventually was won over by the contractors’ arguments. Gansler, now a professor at the University of Maryland, said he is not surprised that the team could not meet the program schedule as promised.
When he approved the teaming concept, Gansler recognized that the schedule would be difficult to meet, he said. But Gansler also felt that having the companies work together would result in the work being done faster than if an individual company did the job, he told Space News.
"I thought it was a tight schedule and I wasn’t very confident that they would make the schedule," Gansler said.
Open competitions usually yield the best results for military hardware programs, but in this case, each company was able to lend a particular specialty that justified them working together as a team, Gansler said.
Officials from the Army, Navy and Air Force will meet Feb. 26 and 27 to address the problem, Pentagon sources said.
One source said dissolving the team, while an option, is unlikely because the contractors may have begun sharing proprietary information.
In a written statement, Lockheed Martin acknowledged that the Advanced EHF schedule has slipped "by a few months due to a delay in starting the program." The statement was provided to Space News by Lockheed Martin spokesman Dave Waller.
The team was formally assembled later than planned due to the Pentagon’s concerns about procuring the Advanced EHF system on a noncompetitive basis, according to a source close to the program. That delayed the start of full-scale development of the system, the source said.
The full-scale development phase now is slated to start April 1, the source said. But that schedule could slip while Pentagon officials deliberate on the design for the first spacecraft, the source said.
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