MELBOURNE, Fla.– Harris Corporation (NYSE:HRS), an international communications and information technology company, has been awarded a contract to study and make recommendations to help modernize the U.S. Defense Meteorological Satellite Program. The contract was awarded by the U.S. Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center’s Defense Weather Systems Directorate.
As part of the study, Harris will analyze the existing Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) space and ground assets and create plans to show how each can evolve into the Weather Satellite Follow-on (WSF) to meet mission needs and lower life cycle costs. Key items to be considered include information assurance, net-centric data strategies, scalability and affordability.
The comprehensive study will address potential compatibility and transition issues, cutover of operations, sustainment impacts, minimizing of disruptions to operations, and security accreditation implications.
The recommendations likely will include an evolutionary approach that leverages Harris’ innovative and proven data processing capabilities to meet critical weather information needs for the warfighter. The approach provides the flexibility, adaptability and scalability required by the Department of Defense to meet current and future national security challenges in an affordable and cost-effective manner.
“Harris has been a technology partner of DMSP for over five decades and is excited to play a role in shaping the program’s architecture for decades to follow,” said Romy Olaisen, vice president, Environmental Systems product line, Harris Government Communications Systems. “The Harris study approach will apply proven expertise in satellite data processing, command and control, and automated product generation and distribution to enable a cost-effective approach for providing weather information to the warfighter.”
Harris is a recognized leader in satellite ground data processing and mission command-and-control systems. The company’s ground data processing systems consist of commodity hardware and a flexible suite of software to receive and process satellite sensor data into products capable of providing actionable information under stringent timelines. The company’s command-and-control systems feature commercial-off-the-shelf design and high levels of flexibility. Designed for government and commercial applications, the systems support single-satellite missions, as well as some of the largest and most complex satellite fleets deployed today.