Air Force posts Wideband Global SATCOM RFI

On May 19, the U.S. Air Force Space Command posted a request for information for Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) for the Military Satellite Communications Systems (MILSATCOM) Directorate (SMC/MC).

The Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) Division, MILSATCOM Directorate is contemplating a contract to develop a Ka-band Anti-Jam capability (AJ) for the USAF WGS satellite constellation. The intent of this RFI is to identify potential sources that can enhance the Ka-band Anti-Jam capability of the WGS satellite constellation and to gather industry’s estimates of development costs, delivery timeline, and ability of offerors to provide the necessary capabilities. The eventual contracted effort shall provide hardware/software upgrades to the WGS Global SATCOM Configuration Control Element (GSCCE) ground control system to detect a jamming situation, locate the jamming source and implement a solution that will allow WGS Ka-band communication in a contested environment. Jamming is a cause for a spectrum of communication capability loss and ranges from partial degradation to the complete loss of communications (denial).

In this RFI, SMC/MC requests industry to provide feedback on the below items. At a minimum, interested offerors must have, or be able to establish, the following capabilities:

a. The ability to perform ground-based Ka-band AJ of all WGS satellites from the GSCCE ground stations controlling the payload using commercial or developmental hardware/software.

b. If the Ka-Band gimbaled dishes are required to implement the AJ capability, provide the minimum required number of dishes that must be used with the proposed technical solution.

c. The ground-based solution shall detect, locate the jamming source(s) and implement a solution that will allow the WGS Ka-band communication to operate in a contested environment. Jamming source(s) mitigation techniques may or may not include detection, and location.

d. Ground-based solution shall work with existing WGS waveforms and future Protected Tactical Waveforms (PTWs). Other possible waveforms/solutions could be considered.

e. Ground based solution shall take into consideration operating under instantaneous bandwidths ranging from 125 MHz to 500 MHz. The AJ capability shall be consistent with the existing Ka-band frequency plan/beam map. Bandwidth need not be contiguous, and the coarsest partition size may be 125 MHz, up to 500 MHz.

f. Respondents shall estimate the effect of the proposed AJ capability on the total Ka-band throughput including the number of service areas provided by each satellite.

g. The software and hardware required to implement the solution must interface with existing GSCCE software and hardware and adhere to Department of Defense (DoD) communications security policy.

h. Respondents must have the ability to obtain rights and agreements to access and utilize Boeing proprietary information specific to the WGS system should accesses to such information be necessary for the development, testing, and implementation of the solution.

Full information is available here.

Source: FedBizOpps