The Government Accountability Office's opinion of the Air Force's Transformational Satellite program has improved since its last assessment of TSAT earlier this year, although GAO remains concerned about possible integration challenges.

"No fundamental discoveries or breakthroughs" are required for TSAT, GAO said in briefing materials obtained by The DAILY, "but the level of difficulty in integrating these technologies is an unknown."

The interim report, which was briefed to Senate authorizers in early September, precedes a final report due to Congress early next year. Earlier this year, GAO said that TSAT was at high risk because it entered development with most of its critical technologies still immature.

Teams led by Boeing and Lockheed Martin/Northrop Grumman are competing to build the space segment of TSAT, which would replace the Advanced Extremely High Frequency constellation and use laser communications to increase the bandwidth available to warfighters. The TSAT program office doesn't plan to award the prime contract until all the necessary critical technologies are at technology readiness level 6, according to GAO.

GAO investigators so far believe that the technology readiness levels of the various TSAT technologies have been assessed accurately, although they still are "reviewing test reports to determine to what extent breadboards and brassboards have met performance expectations and associated technical risks."

GAO's concerns about integration arise from similar problems that other space programs have experienced at that stage, according to a Senate source. Integration of the technologies "can be a technology in and of itself, and hard to do, and that's where a lot of our space programs have failed," the source told The DAILY.

GAO's criticisms of TSAT, combined with general skepticism about the Air Force's ability to manage its space acquisition programs, have prompted Congress to repeatedly cut the Air Force's budget requests for TSAT by hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Senate Armed Services Committee has voted to cut the TSAT's $836 million fiscal 2006 budget request by $200 million. The Senate appropriations bill included a $250 million reduction, while House appropriators have called for a $400 million cut.

The cuts "represented a lack of confidence in space programs, and the early reports from GAO regarding TSAT," the Senate source said. "I think that if TSAT were unencumbered by the sorry history of space acquisition, it would be faring better than it is, and I think that the Air Force understands this is the poster child for acquisition reform, and they're working hard on it."

The Air Force has appointed a new independent panel, chaired by former Martin Marietta executive A. Thomas Young, to assess TSAT (DAILY, Sept. 26). Given such efforts at better oversight, plus GAO's improved opinion, the source believes TSAT should be on "better footing" next year and may escape budget cuts.