Northrop Grumman, Raytheon Discuss Pending OCX Contract

August 26, 2009 By: Alan Cameron

GNSS Design & Test Newsletter, August 2009

With a planned initial operational date in 2013, the GPS Advanced Control Segment (OCX) will improve GPS accuracy, integrity, availability, and continuity for military and civilian users around the world, as well as providing more efficient functionality to GPS operators, maintainers, and analysts. A final down-select by the U.S. Air Force (USAF) Space and Missile Systems Center to one of two contractor teams, led respectively by Northrop Grumman and Raytheon, is expected at the end of September. GPS World spoke to project leads from each team in the final weeks of this contract competition, and their comments follow.

OCX will bring better situational awareness to all GPS users. A robust and rapidly updated information set is expected to become available publicly, both directly from OCX and through the U.S. Coast Guard Navigation Center (NavCen). This information set will include more detailed constellation, coverage, dilution of precision (DOP), accuracy, and planned schedule information than is currently available. The new information will allow users to more effectively plan their missions based on expected GPS performance and that of GPS combined with other navigation and augmentation systems.

For previous coverage including specifics on OCX upgrades, see “The Promise of OCX” (September, 2008) and “AEP Goes Operational” (June, 2008).

The GPS Advanced Control Segment (OCX)

Northrop Grumman

According to Steve Bergjans, Northrop Grumman Information Systems vice president for the GPS OCX program, the OCX effort represents a major modernization investment by the Air Force, with two critical capabilities:

A service-oriented architecture with rapid insertion capability for new mission content
An information assurance approach that provides cyber-secure connections to the Global Information Grid for net-centric operations.

“The fundamentals of navigating satellites, sampling signals through monitoring stations, those remain unchanged. What is different is the recognition that users require assured access to precision PNT, with more interactive concepts between user and control segment than are currently available.

“Interference of all kinds will require a more active interaction between the control segment and the user who may be affected.”

GPS World: Does this include non-military users?

“We have looked at civil-oriented cases. One in particular, a recent occurrence of an interferer disrupting civil access to GPS signal, raised questions about how OCX will collaborate with FAA, DHS, and Coast Guard, to continue assuring civil access to the signal. We’ve met with U.S. government partners that will play major roles.

As to direct civil reporting, work is still being done on the government side; those agencies are prime candidates to be that clearing house on the civil side. They would initiate the collaboration through the right channels to OCX.

“What’s revolutionary about our vision for OCX is its service-oriented architecture, with modern software designed explicitly for net-centricity, to operate safely on authorized networks, so we can expose data, and get real-time feedback from users. Modularity will also facilitate rapid capability insertion.

“Thus, the net-centric concept of operations: more sensor data on local GPS performance and feedback from users, back to the control segment. Collaboration between users and control segment to resolve any issues. This in turn requires a strong information assurance design to ensure security and reliability.”

Raytheon

Bob Canty, GPS OCX Vice President and Program Manager for Raytheon, characterized the conceptual starting point for OCX as separating the GPS control segment from the space segment, after they had been connected for a number of years. “This was a decision made by government to obtain the specialized expertise required to implement new GPS control segment requirements. The reasons for splitting the control segment from space are very similar to why most companies separated information technology (IT) as a separate function. The IT technologies were evolving so rapidly and became so foundational to execution success that specialized skills were needed to execute effectively. The GPS Wing saw the same need for specialized expertise on GPS OCX. By de-coupling the two segments, you also have the added benefit of inserting new operational features faster. From a ground perspective, you can bring capability into operations much more rapidly. Operational capability insertion becomes less dependent on space timelines.”

Canty stressed “time-certain delivery: the ability to deliver a control segment on time to satisfy the first GPS III launch in May 2014. “It’s imperative that OCX has an overall programmatic approach to meet the first launch of GPS III. Our programmatic and technical solution is focused on a low risk approach to satisfying the schedule requirement. We also want to bring into operations as soon as possible new capabilities to enable L2C, M-code, L5, and L1C. Some of this capability is on orbit, or will be on orbit soon, but are not being brought into operations because of the current ground segment limitations. Today the GPS system is essentially being operated in a IIA-plus mode. When OCX gets delivered, it will enable all the capabilities inherent in IIR, IIR-M, and IIF vehicles, as well as all the IIIA capabilities. The current control system, AEP, does not have the capability to provide these enhanced system capabilities. Users want this new capability and time-certain delivery is what we focus on to get it to them.”

“The second focus area of our team is to develop an architecture that can evolve to handle both foreseen and unforeseen changes as the GPS system evolves. We do not want to lock into a design that requires significant modification to incorporate new functions and technologies. One of the advantages that Raytheon has is that we don’t build space platforms but we do build control segments for every space provider and every type of payload. This experience allowed us over time to develop very flexible and reusable architectures. We leverage 40 year of control segment experience into our GPS OCX flexible architecture solution.

Canty stressed information assurance. “More of our networks are being attacked today. You have to develop an information assurance approach that satisfies the time-certain delivery requirement and evolve to deal with future threats going forward. Because of Raytheon’s acquisitions over the past few years, we are well–positioned to satisfy the information assurance requirement. The companies we’ve acquired give us unique insights into future threats and approaches to mitigating the threats. We’ve designed our architecture with that in mind.

“With OCX, we are moving into the Global Information Grid (GIG). Raytheon has excellent experience in net-centric programs. Moving to the GIG will enable GPS to provide more information about the GPS system and its performance to additional military users. It will enhance military effectiveness as more systems leverage GPS information.”

“OCX carries new requirements for system integrity. This capability is very important for civil aviation. We’re leveraging Raytheon technologies developed on WAAS, the only GPS accredited safety-of-life implementation.

“Time-certain delivery is a must in today’s environment. Raytheon’s approach to all aspects of the GPS OCX program ensures we will delivery needed capability on time.”