CAPACITY ON A UHF-CAPABLE ON-ORBIT MEO SATELLITE

The Department of Defense, through the Air Force Research Laboratory’s RVK office, is seeking information on commercially owned and operated MEO satellites with UHF capabilities to support an experimental campaign aimed at evaluating the feasibility of augmenting or eventually replacing the existing GEO-based UHF satellite constellation. The objective is to rapidly acquire access to on-orbit bandwidth to conduct testing that characterizes spectrum usage, waveform performance, and user equipment operation with a MEO UHF system, while also demonstrating interoperability with current GEO assets. The government prioritizes solutions that can deliver immediate or near-term on-orbit capability, with an initial launch capability by 2030 considered useful but not optimal—earlier deployment is strongly encouraged. This initiative is not a procurement but a market research effort to inform a phased roadmap toward a future MEO UHF architecture, with the understanding that the prototype will serve as a foundational step rather than a final system. The solicitation, identified as RFI-RJZX-2026-RAPID, was issued on July 28, 2026, with responses due by August 10, 2026, and was updated on July 23, 2026, to correct uplink and downlink frequency band specifications and replace the original RFI document with an amended version. The point of contact for inquiries is Paola Sanchez-Medina, with secondary support from DeAnna R. Salazar, and performance is expected to be centered in Albuquerque, New Mexico. No contract value, evaluation criteria, delivery schedules, or formal clauses are specified as this is a pre-solicitation request for information intended to gather industry input.