USSF To Begin Major Nuclear Command-And-Control Competition

The U.S. Space Force will officially begin the major competition for the next-generation nuclear command-and-control constellation this month, a program expected to cost up to $8 billion.

The service on April 8 said in an announcement that the request for proposals (RFP) for the Evolved Strategic Satellite Communications (ESS) space vehicle development and production will be released April 22. It will result in a cost-plus incentive fee and cost-plus award fee contracts after a full and open competition, the announcement states. The upcoming RFP will not be public.

ESS will replace the existing Advanced Extremely High Frequency Satellite Communications architecture to provide global, resilient communications for nuclear command and control. The Space Force, in fiscal 2025 budget request justification documents, states the new system is needed by fiscal 2032.

The request includes $1.046 billion for research and development in fiscal 2025. That spending would cover final source selection, award of a space development and production contract, a preliminary design review and establishment of a baseline schedule through an integrated baseline review.

The service in 2020 selected Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman to build space vehicle prototypes for the competition, with Lockheed Martin and RTX competing for ground systems.

While the U.S. Space Force has largely pushed for its acquisition programs to be fixed price, service acquisition boss Frank Calvelli has highlighted ESS as one that would be cost-plus because of the amount of nonrecurring engineering (NRE) required.

The prototyping awards have largely been spent on risk reduction as opposed to actual prototypes, so the competitors are not as far along as Calvelli has hoped.

“Had we built a real payload, or actually built a prototype of a satellite, then hey, maybe it’s time to actually go off and do something fixed price,” he said during a Feb. 23 think tank event in Washington. “But I think given the amount of NRE that still has to go into the program, and feedback I’ve gotten from industry, as we revise that [acquisition strategy] we are probably looking at going to a more traditional cost-plus model.”