ITT Provides Support to USAF Missile Ranges

WGS-2 Launches
from Cape Canaveral
(click to view full)

ITT Corp.’s Systems Division in Cape Canaveral, FL received a $7 million task order to support the US Air Force’s Eastern and Western missile ranges.

The task order was issued as part of a 10-year, $1.3 billion contract awarded to ITT by the USAF.

The contract calls for ITT to modernize the USAF Spacelift Range System (SLRS). This work includes support for spacecraft launch, as well as ballistic missile and aeronautical testing.

Under the contract, ITT supports the USAF Eastern Range at Cape Canaveral Air Station and the Western Range at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. Work includes systems engineering, instrumentation modernization design and development, configuration and data management, software maintenance and depot level maintenance.

The SLRS consists of ground based surveillance, navigation, flight operations and analysis, communications and weather assets used to support space missions. The SLRS performs the following functions:

• collects, processes and distributes data for safety, test and evaluation, and command and control;
• provides communications between instrumentation sites, control centers, and outside ranges, facilities and organizations;
• supports military, civilian and commercial suborbital, orbital and interplanetary launches;
• tests and evaluates ballistic missiles, guided weapons and aeronautical programs; and
• contributes to space surveillance.

The SLRS modernization effort includes:

• improving range responsiveness and flexibility;
• reducing operations and maintenance costs by 20%;
• replacing unique, obsolete, and unsupportable instrumentation and equipment;
• providing more efficient range architecture, automation, and remote control;
• reducing range turnaround time from days to hours between launch operations.

The SLRS is composed of 3 interrelated segments: instrumentation segment, network segment, and control and display segment.

The instrumentation segment of the range system encompasses the sensors necessary to perform mission specific data collection, metric tracking, launch area surveillance, weather data collection, and provide the means for uplinking command/destruct functions. Fixed instrumentation sites were selected to optimize mission performance and are supported by mobile stations.

The network segment is the communications backbone of each range. It provides electronic interconnections between the other segments at each range, and between SLRS and external entities. The network segment provides the conduit for sending voice/video/data to and from remote and local instrumentation sites.

The control and display function serves as the operational heart of SLRS and provides for integrated management of all range assets through video display, voice and data communications, and data processing systems.

The Space and Missile Systems Center at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado manages the contract (F04701-01-C-0001, P00602).