BOEING LANDS $273 MILLION CONTRACT FOR FAB-T PROGRAM
Boeing received 6-year, $273 million contract from U.S. Air Force to design and develop first increment of wideband satellite communications terminals for Dept. of Defense (DoD) Family of Advanced Beyond Line-of-Sight Terminals (FAB-T), company said. (In military lingo, out-of-sight is defined as anything that can’t be seen and in this case term is used for antennas that transmit signals long distance via satellites.) FAB-T is intended to provide military with multimission- capable family of terminals that use common design, open system architecture to communicate with different satellites and enable information exchange among ground, air and space platforms.
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FAB-T represents “radical difference” from past for USAF when it would purchase different satellite terminals for different satellites, Boeing Network Systems Dir. Alex Lopez told us: “For the first time there are multiple platforms for multiple satellites.”
FAB-T will be equipped with software-defined radio technology that can load different programs in different wave forms, Lopez said. Initial purchase “is only for architecture” that’s equipped to handle advanced technology that will be phased in in future increments, Lopez said: “It’s like buying a PC equipped with Windows. You can get a lot of programs that go with it. You don’t have to buy everything at once.” In other increments, FAB-T will communicate with other national satellite communications systems such as Wideband Gapfiller and Global Broadcast System, he said. Air Force called FAB-T key to developing military readiness using advanced technology.
FAB-T will provide critical, protected beyond line-of- sight communications capability for warfighters from Advanced Extremely High Frequency (Advanced EHF) class of secure satellites, Boeing said.
Harris Corp., L-3, TRW and ViaSat are working with Boeing on project, Boeing said. Boeing is responsible for systems engineering and integration, system and terminal architecture, software development, test and evaluation, integrated logistics support and communications engineering. Harris will be responsible for integration terminal and antenna hardware. L-3 will develop modem processor, while TRW has management responsibility for Advanced Extremely High Frequency wave form management. ViaSat will handle communications security module hardware and information security.