Keeping to its "incremental development" approach, the Air Force space budget includes funding for its major imaging, communications and data transmission satellite programs.

But many of those programs still face launch slippages and other hurdles, a senior Air Force official said Feb. 5.

Major programs have been restructured to cut costs and develop along an evolutionary - not revolutionary - scale, and those programs are proceeding as the changed plans call for, the official said.

Overall Air Force space costs would increase to about $11 billion in fiscal year 2008 from about $9.5 billion in fiscal 2007, the source said. About $8.4 billion of the fiscal 2008 budget is for research, development and procurement, compared to about $7 billion for like costs in fiscal 2007.

Space modernization costs for fiscal 2008 would account to about a fifth of the Air Force total modernization costs, the source said.

Statement of intent

Under the fiscal 2008 budget proposal, the Space Radar Program and the Air Force Transformational Satellite (TSAT) program are being slipped until a 2016 first-launch date because of congressional cuts in near-term fiscal funding, the source said.

TSAT, a five-satellite constellation to create an orbital Internet and router network estimated to cost between $16-18 billion, would get about $963 million in fiscal year 2008 for research, development testing and evaluation (RDT&E) according to the proposed budget, compared to $729 million in fiscal 2007 and a proposed $1.2 billion in fiscal 2009.

Details for the space radar program, a persistent, global situational awareness system, are less forthcoming.

The good news, the Air Force official said, is that the service has signed a statement of intent with the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to improve collaboration and cooperation - including funding - for the space radar, whose missions include the gathering of classified intelligence