Chances are that funding may be cut for the Transformational Satellite Program, or TSAT, along with some other defense programs that may go under the knife in the impending administration of President-elect Obama, a report asserts.

The report dated last week was published by the Center for Strategic & International Studies (CSIS), a Washington think tank.

While the Air Force has invested $2 billion in TSAT, cost overruns and schedule slips have plagued the program, and it is low on a list of priorities, just as tight budget times loom, the CSIS report continued.

"The current wars and aging aircraft fleets have swept space-based programs from the Air Force list of procurement priorities," the report asserted.

With the Bush administration deferring award of a TSAT contract, so that the Obama administration would have to award it, the upshot is that TSAT may never be built, the report cautions.

"The decision to task the next administration with a contract award will not only delay the system development but jeopardize the program’s future altogether," the report predicted.

There are too many other urgent needs demanding funds, the report explained.

"The new administration faces rising maintenance costs to reset a war-torn Army, a [Department of Defense]-wide procurement crisis, and out-of-control supplemental funding," the CSIS report by Hans Ulrich Kaeser and Anthony H. Cordesman stated.

Thus the new administration taking office Jan. 20 "is unlikely to produce the spare change to support a $10 billion space project," the report predicted.

"Should TSAT be continued, it will not be before the [fiscal eyar] 2010 budget."

This will mean more than losing the TSAT communications system, but rather will mean difficulties for other programs, the report stated.

"A communications backbone of the military’s new vision of network-centric warfare, delays or a cancellation of the program will also have serious repercussions on other communications programs and the Army’s Future Combat System in general."

To read the report titled "Defense Procurement By Paralysis: Costly Mortgages for theNext Administration" in entirety, please go to http://www.csis.org/media/csis/pubs/081114_defense_procurment_by_paralysis.pdf on the Web.