[02-27-12] Critical military space capabilities such as missile warning, satellite communications, launch and space situational awareness were protected in the Pentagon\u2019s 2013 space program budget to ensure continued support to warfighters and space operations around the globe, U.S. Air Force<\/b> Undersecretary Erin Conaton confirmed during a Feb. 24 media roundtable.<\/p>\n
Air Force leaders recently convened to develop strategies in sustaining and modernizing capabilities supporting the U.S. Department of Defense<\/b>\u2019s new strategic guidance that was released in January. The plans that came out of these meetings, however, may sound familiar to the commercial satellite sector.
\n \u201cOur acquisition strategy will see the Air Force continue with its Efficient Space Procurement program, which includes block buys of satellites, fixed price contracts, continued investment in research and development and a modified funding profile through advanced appropriations over multiple years,\u201d said Conaton.
\n Conaton said the government had several reasons to assign priorities to the U.S. space program, despite reducing overall funding levels for its fiscal 2013 program budget. \u201cA lot of our programs have moved out of the developmental phase and are in production at this point. Obviously, that has a different funding profile,\u201d said Conaton. \u201cOur partners in Congress were incredibly generous in helping to robust the Wideband Global Satellite (WGS) communications program, which meant that we didn\u2019t have to fund additional satellites in that program this year.
\n Conaton added that Congress\u2019 decision to terminate the military\u2019s Defense Weather Satellite System program gave the Air Force breathing room in making its own budget decisions on what areas could be scaled back or cut from the space program.
\n The Air Force also is making an effort to deal with increasingly expensive launch services for its satellites. \u201cThe Air Force, along with our partners in the National Reconnaissance Office<\/b> and in NASA<\/b>, are committed to finding a way to get the best deal for the taxpayer, recognizing that launch continues to be at the core of what we do in the space business,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
[02-27-12] Critical military space capabilities such as missile warning, satellite communications, launch and space situational awareness were protected in the Pentagon\u2019s 2013 space program budget to ensure continued support to warfighters and space operations around the globe, U.S. Air Force Undersecretary Erin Conaton confirmed during a Feb. 24 media roundtable. Air Force leaders recently […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-83495","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83495"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83495\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}