Washington, D.C.- The United States Air Force announced that they are reexamining their Satellite system, and that there are going to be some changes. The Transformational Satellite Communications System program, which was slated to go into effect over the next several months will be set back, perhaps as much as six years.
It is a program to dramatically expand the bandwidth that the military has available to it, in the radio frequency spectrum. Despite a lot of different design engineering, the current system has issues that are not easily solved.
The Service announced that there will be a new proposal request released later this week, and an Air Force spokesman will be issuing a number of requests for proposals.
The first TSAT satellite was designed to be launched in 2013, but it will now be launched with a tentative date of 2019 according to the press release from the Air Force. The Pentagon has issued a statement that any further decisions regarding the new TSAT program will be made by the Obama administration.
The program will still be comprised of 5 block satellites including associated ground control and first launch on 2019. It will provide nearly 100 times the current radio bandwidth that is available now.
