WASHINGTON — Peraton received a $218 million contract to provide commercial satellite communications services for U.S. Africa Command, the company announced March 3. The contract had been previously given to Inmarsat but had to be re-competed after Peraton successfully protested the award.

The contract was issued under the General Services Administration’s Future Commercial Satcom Acquisition (FCSA) program that previously was managed by the Defense Information Systems Agency but now is part of the U.S. Space Force’s commercial satcom procurement office.

Peraton will provide Ku-band connectivity to U.S. Africa Command, headquartered in Stuttgart, Germany, by combining satcom capacity from several satellite fleet operators. The contract value of $218 million is a ceiling for services to be procured over five years.

“As an independent service integrator, Peraton takes a neutral, vendor-agnostic approach to leverage the best technologies available from across the entire commercial satellite industry,” David Myers, president of Peraton’s communications sector, said in a statement.

A Peraton spokesman confirmed that this award is the second re-compete of the Africa Command satcom contract that was first awarded to Inmarsat in June 2019. Peraton filed a legal protest with the Government Accountability Office and won. DISA then retracted the award and issued a new request for proposals as was recommended by the GAO.

Sandra Erwin writes about military space programs, policy, technology and the industry that supports this sector. She has covered the military, the Pentagon, Congress and the defense industry for nearly two decades as editor of NDIA’s National Defense...