Boeing has been awarded a contract worth $439.6 million to construct the 12th Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) communications satellite for the U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command. The WGS constellation is an essential system that delivers high-capacity, secure, and resilient communications capabilities to the U.S. military and its allies.
WGS’s responsive, steerable, high-capacity beams offer assured connectivity via the Protected Tactical Enterprise Service (PTES) ground system. It also provides enhanced anti-jam communications by combining the U.S. military’s jam-resistant Protected Tactical Waveform with antenna nulling in the Ka band. Boeing’s new Protected Tactical Satcom Prototype payload’s anti-jam capability will be integrated into WGS-12, providing a second Protected Wideband Satellite to the U.S. military. This will expand anti-jam tactical communications capacity for U.S. warfighters and allies to operate in multiple contested theaters.
“We are proud to be a mission partner and are ready to continue providing protected tactical communications to the warfighter,” said Michelle Parker, vice president of Space Mission Systems. “Like WGS-11, the 12th WGS satellite will provide critical capabilities to our military with over 1,500 individually steerable, shapeable beams in the Ka band, ensuring tactical forces have resilient communications.”
Leveraging advanced techniques such as additive manufacturing, rapid prototyping, and agile development, Boeing is building the WGS-11 and WGS-12 communications satellites, which offer significant growth in system performance. The WGS-11 is currently being built at Boeing’s El Segundo, Calif., site.
