TRW wins payload contracts for Milstar Flights 5 and 6

Business Wire, May 31, 1995

REDONDO BEACH, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--May 31, 1995--TRW has completed negotiations with Lockheed Martin Missiles & Space and Hughes Space and Communications Co. to provide a key communications payload and several payload subsystems for the fifth and sixth Milstar satellites.

The new contracts will allow the Department of Defense to complete the last two of four tactically oriented Milstar Block II satellites approved for development and production last October by the Pentagon Defense Acquisition Board. Milstar is the Department of Defense's next generation satellite communications system.

Under terms of a five-year, $411-million contract with Lockheed Martin, the Milstar prime contractor, TRW will fabricate, assemble and test the low data rate (LDR) communications payloads for the Milstar Flights 5 and 6.

The contract calls for those payloads to be delivered in 1999 and 2000, respectively. TRW is currently under contract to Lockheed Martin to build LDR payloads for the first four Milstar satellites.

Under terms of a separate $149-million contract with Hughes, TRW will also provide several antenna and processing subsystems for the Milstar 5 and 6 medium data rate (MDR) communications payloads.

For each payload, TRW will produce two nulling antennas, which allow tactical users to communicate securely in the presence of enemy jamming; six distributed user coverage antennas, which provide command and control communications support for U.S. Navy carrier groups; plus related processing subsystems and software.

TRW is scheduled to make final deliveries of its MDR subsystems in the year 2000.

``The conclusion of these contract negotiations brings closure to an important streamlining effort that the Air Force began in 1993 to achieve a lower risk, more cost-effective way to build Milstar satellites,'' said Paul Borzcik, TRW's Milstar program manager.

``The Milstar contractor team has helped the Air Force identify and implement changes that will save the program several hundred million dollars over the life of the contract,'' he added.

Under current Pentagon planning, the Air Force will launch a total of six Milstar satellites. The first satellite, which was launched into geosynchronous orbit in February 1994, and the second satellite, which is scheduled for launch in 1995, are known as Block I satellites.

They carry an LDR payload built by TRW. Milstar satellites 3 through 6, which are designated Block II satellites, will have both an LDR payload and an MDR payload.

The MDR payload, which is supplied by Hughes, enables higher data rate voice, data and imagery transmissions among tactical users. It was added to the program in 1992 as part of a restructuring process that expanded Milstar's initial mission of supporting strategic, low-data-rate communications among theater commanders to include a more tactical mission that would support higher data rate communications among users within a given theater.

According to Borzcik, TRW's streamlining suggestions to Lockheed Martin and the Air Force eliminated significant gaps that would have occurred in the manufacturing and integration and testing (I&T) of LDR payloads as a result of changing from Block I to Block II satellites.

``When the program was restructured in 1992,'' he explained, ``we'd already built much of the LDR payload for the third satellite. The original schedule required us to finish the LDR payload for the fourth satellite before we could modify the LDR payload for the third satellite to accommodate its connection to the new MDR payload.

``Since those modifications required little manufacturing support, we were faced with putting our payload manufacturing effort on hold for nearly two years before starting work on the fifth and sixth payloads. This would have added significant retooling and restaffing costs to the program when the LDR payload work resumed.''

Instead, said Borzcik, TRW stretched out the LDR payload 4 production schedule and set it up to run concurrently with the payload 3 modification effort. The new schedule reduces the company's Milstar manufacturing and I&T work force, but also allows it to keep its core payload manufacturing and I&T resources fully utilized throughout the Milstar program.

TRW Space & Electronics Group, with headquarters in Redondo Beach, has built more than 180 communications, scientific and defense spacecraft; produced, integrated and tested more than 130 payloads; developed more than 200 advanced space instruments; and integrated some 550 experiments into spacecraft.

It is an operating unit of TRW Inc., which provides advanced technology products and services for the automotive, space and defense, and information markets. TRW Inc.'s 1994 sales totaled $9.1 billion.

CONTACT: TRW Inc.

A. Brooks McKinney, 310/814-8177