Air Force GPS Wing Commander on constellation status

GPS World, Sept, 2006

Colonel Wesley A. Ballenger, Jr. (CB), Commander, Global Positioning Wing of the U.S. Air Force, spoke with GPS World editor Alan Cameron (AC) on August 17. Slightly more than half the interview appears here; for full length, see www.gpsworld.com.

AC: What priorities does GPS JPO have to juggle in addition to constellation maintenance and replenishment?

CB: Here at the JPO, or what used to be the JPO, we're the acquisition managers. The operators are at Schriever Air Force Base (AFB) flying the constellation. Effective August 1, the major program offices were stood up as full-fledged wings of Air Force Space Command. We are now known as the GPS Wing at Los Angeles AFB.

Our number one priority is constellation sustainment to continue to provide the signals for our military and civil users worldwide. We take very seriously that this is a dual-use system, and we involve our civil users and partners in key deliberations. In strategy and acquisition meetings, we include representation from civil users, so they have a voice and input. Sustainment is larger than just the constellation. We also manage updates of the ground control segment.

The second phase is modernization. You're familiar with our strategy of Block IIRM satellites adding L2C and M-code. Our next generation of satellites is Block IIF to begin launching in mid-2008, and following those we will have the Block IIIA. I used the term IIIA--we talk about an incremental or block approach to space systems development. That is our renewed commitment to rebuild the confidence of our users and operators that we will deliver on time and within cost. We have an incremental approach to delivery, rather than biting off too much to achieve, that might result in a schedule slip or cost overrun. We're now managing technical complexity and risk so that we meet our commitments. The full set of features on GPS III had been envisioned to include crosslinks and spot beams. While that is still part of the overall long-term plan, we're looking at a block approach to GPS III, so for any of those features that we learn become key drivers of technical complexity or cost or schedule, we'll reassess those and if necessary defer them to a later block rather than delay the schedule. Rather than fail to deliver capabilities to warfighters and civil users. That's across all AF space programs, not just GPS. It's key for Lt. General Mike Hamel, Commander of Space and Missile Systems Center, and Program Executive Officer for Space Systems.

Our third priority is synchronizing user capabilities with sustainment and modernization. One of our challenges is we have the space, ground control, and user segments of GPS. On the user segment, I'm responsible for military user equipment, not civil or commercial, except that we have clear specs and standards publicly available so receiver manufacturers understand exactly the frequency and signal characteristics so they can build to take advantage of signals we provide free of direct user fees.

By virtue of defining the L2C signal and making that spec available, some receivers were already designed and available when that satellite launched, and when it is in view, users can take advantage of it.

About the time we have a good number of satellites in the sky, nominally about 18 sats, we would then have the full capability to control all aspects of that signal on the ground, and a significant fielding underway to get the appropriate user equipment into military platforms. It's like lining up multiple sliding windows: 6-8 years to launch a full constellation of new satellites, 5-10 years to fully capitalize all the user equipment across ships and planes and tanks and other warfighting platforms that need GPS, and also to update the ground segment. Pulling all those together results in marginal capability improvements overtime, and that's one of our challenges.

AC: How does the budget affect these priorities, in particular, constellation replenishment?

CB: It affects everything we do, because without money we aren't. We have been very blessed with strong leadership support on our budget, up to the highest levels of DoD and Department of Transportation. Deputy Secretary of Defense Mr. England, his guidance and leadership as it flows down through DoD and AF and ultimately to us as the executors, has been very supportive at the top line of our overall budgets, parsed into several line items. The FY07 budget is currently on Capitol Hill, being considered and hopefully enacted in the next month or two. Right now we see very strong support for all aspects of that budget.

AC: What is your estimation of constellation health at this time?

CB: I would say it is very good. Recall that the constellation is a mix of older satellites and newer satellites, and a bunch in the middle. Our predecessors did a great job of designing the satellites, and the satellites are lasting longer, so we don't have to launch quite as fast. That enabled us to take a little time, factor in new features onto modernized satellites, and get that new capability into orbit. We look at the full constellation, satellite by satellite, component by component, to understand each satellite's capability and contribution to the global coverage of the signal.