[Satellite News 12-01-08] ViaSat has made significant progress in developing its Blue Force Tracking (BFT) upgrade for the U.S. Army, according to Ric Vandermeulen, the company’s director of government broadband. But Vandermeulen told Satellite News that despite the progress, the transition to BFT2 will take at least 24 months.
    “Even if we shipped these systems to our customer instantaneously, wer’re not going to replace 45,000 systems overnight,” said Vandermeulen. “The original systems won’t go away overnight. The plan for the new system is that [the U.S. Army] will want to run a low-rate initial production and then go through formal testing and evaluation on the improvements. Then they can go into full scale production.”
    The BFT system, which consists of a network of computers linking GPS satellites, sensors and communication devices with military vehicles and weapons, is the U.S. military’s solution to reduce casualties caused by friendly fire. The U.S. Army and U.S. Marine Corps have already deployed more than 50,000 of the first line of Blue Force units developed by Northrop Grumman and Comtech in 2003.
    A U.S Army official, who asked not to be named for this story, said that “Installations of the new terminals will be equipped in vehicles frequently used in current combat operations like helicopters and eventually in future combat systems vehicles. But, we will still be using and ordering the older systems as well. It is not known whether or when the upgrades terminals will become the standard,” said the military official.
    The BFT2 upgrade, in development since April 2007 and scheduled to be released in 2010, uses ViaSat’s ArcLight technology to improve situational awareness by increasing the number of messages transmitted per minute and making better use of satellite resources to allow a greater number of users per channel. Armed forces use BFT to view regularly updated troop positions on screens in their vehicles and aircraft to differentiate between friendly and enemy forces.
    Today’s BFT network provides vehicle location updates roughly every 10-12 minutes. ViaSat’s new network design aims to bring those positioning update intervals down to roughly 10 seconds or 50 meters. ViaSat has also developed BFT2 to be IP-routable which opens the system to future addition of a variety of services. The developer said that potential new capabilities could include file transfers, image downloads, e-mail, web browsing, and voice services.
    But, the BFT2 upgrade does not come cheap. ViaSat’s development partner, Northrop Grumman, has put a $2,500 price tag on each BFT2 terminal, $900 more than the current systems.
    Despite the price, Vandermeulen said the U.S. government is pleased with the new system’s efficiency. “From a space segment capacity standpoint, we have been told by the U.S. government that we are eight times more cost efficient. So if it is true that they’re spending $50 million a year on space segment, divide that by eight and you’ll see its worth the price.”
    Vandermeulen said that after ViaSat recently demonstrated the BFT2 for the U.S. Army and displayed the system at the Milcom 2008 convention in November, the company is now in final negotiations. “The next wave of contract awards are progressing and anticipated in the near future,” he said.