Aerospace and defense giant Northrop Grumman was awarded a contract from the U.S. Space and Missile Systems Center for Evolved Strategic Satellite Communications, known as Evolved Strategic Satcom program.
The award, announced by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) on 16 September, provides a payload to develop hardware and software of jam-resistant military satellite.
Work will be performed in Redondo Beach, California, and is expected to be completed May 2025.
In mid-February, the Breaking Defense reported that prototyping of the space system is expected to begin in October 2020, with Space Force looking at contracting up to three providers.
The ESS program continues the strategic satcom mission of the Advanced Extremely High Frequency constellation. This includes providing survivable, global, secure, protected, and jam-resistant communications for high-priority military operations and national command authorities.