Air Force Awards Northrop $429M North Pole Satcom Payload Contract

Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC) has secured a potential $428.8 million contract from the U.S. Air Force to develop two extremely high-frequency payloads to support military satellite communications in the North Polar region.

The Defense Department said Wednesday Northrop’s aerospace systems business will provide a pair of functionally equivalent EHF eXtended Data Rate payloads to the Enhanced Polar System recapitalization effort.

The Air Force will obligate a total of $20 million at the time of award from the service branch’s research and development funds for fiscal years 2017 and 2017.

Contract work will occur in Redondo Beach, California, and is scheduled to finish by December 2022.

EPS-R EHF XDR payloads are designed to help prevent a milsatcom mission gap in the Polar region, DoD noted.

The EPS constellation will succeed the current Interim Polar System and function as a polar adjunct to another EHF SATCOM system, according to Northrop.

The system’s satellite-based EHF communications payloads will provide users advanced communications terminals, a gateway to connect into the Global Information Grid and other communication systems and an EPS control and planning segment.

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