Mercury Systems, a technology company that delivers mission-critical processing to the edge, announced a new production agreement with AeroVironment to support the U.S. Space Force’s Satellite Communication Augmentation Resource (SCAR) program.
AV was awarded the $1.4 billion SCAR contract in 2022 by the Space Rapid Capabilities Office (RCO), a direct reporting unit of the Space Force. The program leverages AV’s BADGER system, a multi-band deployable ground communications system that simplifies space mission operations through agile, re-configurable beamforming tiles. The Space RCO and AV have completed every development milestone for this complex technology and are now focused on integrating and delivering the first BADGER unit this year.
Mercury provides a field-programmable gate array (FPGA)-based signal acquisition and digital beamforming solution for BADGER based on its Quartz RFSoC and Navigator Design Suite commercial product offerings. The company has been producing hardware for the first four BADGER systems under an initial contract awarded in 2023. The new production agreement signed in April will support two additional BADGER systems.
“We are proud to extend our partnership with AV for this critical national security mission,” said Ken Hermanny, Mercury’s Senior Vice President of Signal Technologies. “By leveraging a suite of commercial technologies from the Mercury Processing Platform, AV is integrating and producing this game-changing capability at exceptional speed and scale.”
“The SCAR program will soon transform our nation’s satellite command and control capabilities–a major milestone for securing our strategic advantage in the space domain,” said Mary Clum, Executive Vice President of AV’s Space and Directed Energy Mission Systems group. “To answer the urgent calls for this critical technology and deliver our BADGER systems with speed and scale, AV has focused significant internal investments on supply chain readiness and manufacturing. Mercury has been a key partner in these efforts, leaning forward to accelerate production and support the Space Force’s mission needs.”
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