Mercury Systems has signed a new production agreement with AeroVironment to support the U.S. Space Force’s $1.4 billion Satellite Communication Augmentation Resource, or SCAR, program.
“We are proud to extend our partnership with AV for this critical national security mission,” said Ken Hermanny, Mercury senior vice president of signal technologies. “By leveraging a suite of commercial technologies from the Mercury Processing Platform, AV is integrating and producing this game-changing capability at exceptional speed and scale.”
AeroVironment was awarded the SCAR contract in 2022 by the Space Rapid Capabilities Office, which manages fast-turnaround technology for the Space Force. The program is built around AeroVironment’s BADGER system, a multi-band deployable ground communications platform that uses agile, reconfigurable beamforming tiles to simplify satellite mission operations.
Mary Clum, executive vice president of AeroVironment’s Space and Directed Energy Mission Systems group, said the SCAR program is expected to transform U.S. satellite command and control capabilities and mark a major milestone in maintaining the nation’s strategic advantage in space.
“To answer the urgent calls for this critical technology and deliver our BADGER systems with speed and scale, AV has focused significant internal investments on supply chain readiness and manufacturing,” she added. “Mercury has been a key partner in these efforts, leaning forward to accelerate production and support the Space Force’s mission needs.”
Mercury supplies a field-programmable gate array-based signal acquisition and digital beamforming solution for BADGER, drawing on its Quartz RFSoC and Navigator Design Suite products. The company has already provided hardware for four BADGER units under a 2023 contract. The new agreement, signed in April, extends production to two additional systems.