{"id":86582,"date":"2010-07-28T19:29:15","date_gmt":"2010-07-28T11:29:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/viasats-berry-company-surprised-by-bft-2-contract-win\/"},"modified":"2010-07-28T19:29:15","modified_gmt":"2010-07-28T11:29:15","slug":"viasats-berry-company-surprised-by-bft-2-contract-win","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/viasats-berry-company-surprised-by-bft-2-contract-win\/","title":{"rendered":"ViaSat\u2019s Berry: Company Surprised by BFT-2 Contract Win"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[07-28-10] The <strong>U.S. Army<\/strong> awarded <strong>ViaSat<\/strong> with the Blue Force Tracking 2 (BFT-2) contract July 22 to upgrade 100,000 Army vehicles with a next-generation tracking system intended to prevent friendly fire incidents.<br \/>\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; ViaSat said it unseated incumbent <strong>Comtech<\/strong> by offering new technology at a lower cost. ViaSat Vice President of Global Satcom Systems Phil Berry spoke with Satellite News about the company\u2019s reaction to the award and how ViaSat plans to implement its ArcLight-based BFT-2 offering while meeting deadlines.<br \/>\n&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; \u201cIt is very rare to unseat an incumbent in an existing military program. While it is a difficult task, the Army strongly supports open competition. We offered the best price for BFT-2 that we could, which we believe is both fair and legal,\u201d Berry said.<\/p>\n<p><em>The complete contents of this interview are available to subscribers of Satellite News, our premium b2b newsletter providing in-depth coverage of the satellite industry and more. To access this and other features, subscribe to Satellite News by visiting www.satellitetoday.com\/vip <\/em>\n<\/p>\n<h2>Related Stories-<\/h2>\n<p><b class=\"titlelink\">U.S. Army Selects ViaSat for Blue Force Tracking 2 Contract<\/b>&nbsp;&nbsp; \t\t\tSatellite Today&nbsp;&nbsp; \t\t\tJuly 22, 2010<br \/>\n[07-22-10] The U.S. Army  selected ViaSat as the winner of the Blue Force Tracking 2 (BFT-2)  program contract over Comtech Mobile Datacom, the competitors announced  in separate statements issued July 21.<\/p>\n<p><b class=\"titlelink\">Comtech Expects Blue Force Tracking 2 Decision by End of July<\/b>&nbsp;<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"12\" height=\"14\" align=\"top\" src=\"..\/..\/..\/..\/images\/icon_lock.gif\" alt=\"\">&nbsp;&nbsp; \t\t\tSatellite News&nbsp;&nbsp; \t\t\tJuly 21, 2010<br \/>\n[07-21-10] Comtech Mobile  Datacom expects the U.S. Army to announce its multi-year $200 million  Blue Force Tracking 2 (BFT2) contract winner by end of the month, and  one analyst said the Army s moves indicate that Comtech is the\u2026<\/p>\n<p><b class=\"titlelink\">ViaSat Receives U.S. Army Order for Blue Force Testing Prototype<\/b>&nbsp;&nbsp; \t\t\tSatellite Today&nbsp;&nbsp; \t\t\tMarch 18, 2009<br \/>\n[03-18-09] ViaSat received an  order from the U.S. Army for initial production of the next generation  Blue Force Tracking (BFT-2) transceivers for the Force 21 Battle Command  Brigade and Below (FBCB2) satellite network upgrade\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[07-28-10] The U.S. Army awarded ViaSat with the Blue Force Tracking 2 (BFT-2) contract July 22 to upgrade 100,000 Army vehicles with a next-generation tracking system intended to prevent friendly fire incidents. &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; ViaSat said it unseated incumbent Comtech by offering new technology at a lower cost. ViaSat Vice President of Global Satcom Systems Phil [&hellip;]<\/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-86582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86582"}],"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=86582"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/86582\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=86582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=86582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=86582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}