The U.S. Air Force is struggling against rising costs and poor contractor performance to field advanced satellites that it says are critical to future warfighting.

Last week, the Air Force decided to cut fees owed Boeing, citing a $260-million cost overrun and delays of three years in the company's work on new Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites. Meanwhile, an Air Force review of the program recommended rescheduling first launch of the new satellites from January 2007 to May 2008.

Nearly the entire slate of Air Force satellite programs, valued at around $40 billion through 2010, faces cost, schedule and technical challenges. Space Radar, a $5-billion program to field orbiting radars for ground targeting, has suffered Congressional budget cuts in recent years amid concerns that its cost and schedule are poorly defined. Transformational Satellite, or TSAT, is intended to support secure wideband communications with a five-satellite constellation beginning in 2013, all in an effort to ward off an impending military bandwidth crunch. But the Congressional Budget Office contends that even TSAT -- part of a portfolio of communications satellites that accounts for the majority of space spending -- will fail to satisfy the military's enormous (and growing) appetite for secure bandwidth.

In this unforgiving environment, the Air Force is working hard to control costs and quality while preaching the importance of orbital systems.  Masao Doi and Technical Sergeant Jennifer Thibault at Air Force Space Command, working from information provided by service officials, prepared a briefing for Military.com outlining the capabilities of the GPS satellites, Space Radar and TSAT as well as efforts to ensure they stay on cost and on time:

To prevent further delays and mitigate contractor failures in the GPS program, the Air Force is focusing on discipline and stability, integrating only necessary advancements while sticking firm to clear set of requirements. And it will continue doling out penalties as necessary to "incentivize contractors to deliver on cost and schedule."

GPS is the most mature and necessary of the three systems in question. TSAT and Space Radar still face cancellation if Congress loses faith in the programs or changes its mind about their utility.

That would be a mistake, the Air Force contends.

"While the U.S. military has always had to operate with less than optimal communications resources to support operations such as Desert Storm in 1991, the shortfall became even more acutely felt after September 11th, when it became evident that the Department of Defense ... required not only more communications capacity, but more connectivity amongst leadership and forces not provided by current military satellite communications ... systems."

Hence the need for TSAT, the Air Force explains. It claims the advanced communications satellite, as part of a system of systems, will provide Internet-like connectivity to rapidly-moving ground forces, linking them to Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and other airborne sensors in near real-time. 

Space Radar, the service continues, "will provide persistent, day/night, worldwide, all-weather intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance ... capabilities for military, national intelligence and civil applications." The satellite will provide a number of "products": it will be able shoot high-resolution ground maps, track enemy vehicles and spot elusive ships. "When combined, the fused products yield an even deeper understanding of the local situation and/or world events."

To ensure Space Radar's survival in a harsh budgetary and political climate, the Air Force is eschewing "an overly ambitious approach." "[Space Radar] will not proceed into [final design] until technology is mature."