Northrop Grumman is developing a geostationary communications satellite to compete with Boeing for an estimated $2.4 billion in military supplies. Boeing and Northrop Grumman were selected by the US Space Force in 2020 to develop a prototype of a shielded tactical satellite communications system known as PTS. Both payloads have passed government design review and are approved for a demonstration in orbit, scheduled for 2025.

Blake Bullock, vice president of communications systems in Northrop Grumman’s Strategic Space Systems division, said the company’s PTS payload will fly in a custom spacecraft built on the ESPAStar-HP satellite bus. This is an enlarged version of ESPAStar’s commercial bus optimized for operation in geospatial orbit.

The Boeing PTS prototype will be launched as a payload hosted on the Space Force’s WGS-11 broadband global satellite satellite, which Boeing is developing under the 2019 contract. The company plans to deliver the satellite in 2024. Bullock said Northrop Grumman will launch the satellite into orbit as part of a national security space mission on a United Launch Alliance Vulcan rocket. “The program is ready to launch in 2025,” he said in a statement. Space News.

The competition will continue for several more years.

The U.S. Space Force may choose one or both companies to produce additional payloads, according to Department of Defense budget documents. Whatever version of the PTS is chosen, it will be the military’s next generation secure communications satellite, designed to complement Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellites used for covert communications.

Bullock said the PTS aims to provide “uninterrupted communication even in the presence of complex interference threats.”

Northrop Grumman decided to build a standalone satellite rather than a deployed payload to offer the government more flexible launch options.

He said the annular ESPAStar-HP could be built faster than conventional military satellites and could be launched in batches. “Our solution works both as a free passenger and on any bus that has the space, weight and power needed to support the load.”

The Department of Defense requests $360 million for the PTS program in fiscal 2024 and is estimated to spend up to $2.4 billion by 2028.

In its budget reasoning documents, the Department of Defense said it expects the two prototype PTS payloads to be “launched as payloads on Boeing’s WGS-11 satellites (deployed) and Northrop Grumman’s ESPAStar-HP satellites (free-flying) in fiscal 2025.”

After both versions of the PTS have been evaluated, the Space Force may decide to maintain hosted or free-flight configurations for launch in fiscal 2028 and 2029.