spacetoday.net: Boeing to lose part of spysat program

Posted: Sat, Sep 17, 2005, 2:35 PM ET (1835 GMT)
The Defense Department is planning to strip part of a controversial spy satellite program from Boeing and give the work to Lockheed Martin, according to media reports. Boeing won the Future Imagery Architecture (FIA) contract from the National Reconnaissance Office in 1999 in an upset over Lockheed Martin. However, FIA has suffered from an estimated $4-5 billion in cost overruns as well as schedule delays. DoD sources said Friday that they are finalizing plans to transfer much of the FIA work to Lockheed, a move that would cost Boeing billions of dollars and hundreds to thousands of jobs. FIA is designed to be the next generation of high-resolution optical and radar reconnaissance satellites for the defense and intelligence communities.