Air Force officials overseeing HACM told the Government Accountability Office that the program’s first design review was held in September 2024 — six months later than expected — because more time was needed to nail down the missile’s hardware design. As a result, the service will only have time to conduct five flight tests for HACM before it begins rapid fielding efforts in fiscal 2027.

“Program officials said that the delays will reduce the number of flight tests the program can conduct during the 5-year rapid prototyping effort from seven to five,” GAO said in its annual assessment of the Pentagon’s acquisition programs, published Wednesday. “These officials said that the program will still be able to establish sufficient confidence in the missile to declare it operational and to meet all the [middle tier of acquisition pathway’s] objectives with the reduced number of tests.”

Led by RTX subsidiary Raytheon, HACM is an air-breathing scramjet missile and one of the Air Force’s two main efforts to develop hypersonic weapons, which can fly at speeds of at least Mach 5 and are highly maneuverable mid-flight. Northrop Grumman is also on the program as a subcontractor that’s developing the scramjet engine.

Raytheon received a $985 million deal from the Air Force in 2022 to develop HACM under a middle tier of acquisition (MTA) contract, an alternative procurement pathway that requires systems to complete a rapid prototyping effort within five years. The company was later given a $407 million award in 2023 for additional work to enhance the HACM’s capabilities — bringing the contract’s total value to nearly $1.4 billion.

According to its budget request for fiscal 2025, the Air Force planned to mature HACM’s design and initiate flight test activities — including integration on the F-15E Strike Eagle and F/A-18E/F Super Hornet, as well as all-up-round free flight testing of missile prototypes. The service intended to build 13 missiles during the rapid prototyping effort to use as “test assets, spares, and rounds for initial operational capability,” the GAO report noted.

Program officials told GAO that HACM’s first design review was delayed to allow for more time to finalize the missile’s hardware design and “validate an initial configuration of the system for use in the first flight test,” the report stated. Another review to certify the system’s “fully operational configuration for use in the final flight tests” was scheduled for sometime in 2025. 

An Air Force spokesperson declined to comment on the current status of HACM’s development, citing “enhanced program security measures.” Raytheon did not respond to DefenseScoop’s request for comment.

Furthermore, GAO said that Raytheon is now “projecting that it will significantly exceed its cost baseline” for HACM, although Air Force officials told the watchdog that removing two flight tests could offer some savings. The program’s development cost as of January 2025 was estimated at close to $2 billion — a two percent increase from the watchdog’s 2024 assessment of $1.9 billion, according to the new report.

HACM would not be the Air Force’s first hypersonic missile to face challenges during development. Its other program — the Lockheed Martin-developed AGM-183A Air-Launched Rapid Response Weapon (ARRW) — had a rocky test campaign. At least one of the weapon’s flight tests was deemed unsuccessful, prompting the service to shift priority to HACM’s development.

Issues during ARRW’s testing led the service to axe the weapon’s procurement in FY’25 so the Air Force could reassess the program for future budget requests, casting doubt on ARRW’s future. However, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Allvin recently revealed that the service has included funds to buy ARRW missiles in its upcoming fiscal 2026 budget request.

“I will tell you that we are developing — and you’ll see in the budget submission, assuming it’s what we put forward — two different programs. One is a larger form factor that is more strategic [and] long range that we have already tested several times — it’s called ARRW. The other is HACM,” Allvin said last week during a House Armed Services Committee hearing.

Although both ARRW and HACM are hypersonic weapons, they each have different propulsion systems that give them different characteristics. ARRW is a large boost-glide missile that uses a rocket motor to achieve hypersonic flight and is thus limited to being carried by bigger platforms, such as the B-52 Stratofortress bomber. On the other hand, HACM is a smaller cruise missile powered by an air-breathing jet engines, or scramjet, meaning it can be launched from more tactical aircraft like fighter jets.

Despite their differences, Air Force officials have previously stated that both ARRW and HACM are “complementary” to one another.

Moving forward, the Air Force is working with Raytheon to create a new schedule for HACM that still follows the five-year rapid prototyping timeframe mandated for MTA programs, GAO noted in the report. The government watchdog also said the Air Force has altered HACM’s transition strategy to support faster delivery of more missiles, while also improving the weapon’s design for large-scale manufacturing and expanding the industrial base’s capacity for production.

The service currently plans to use the rapid fielding effort in FY’27 to deliver missiles developed during HACM’s initial prototyping phase and then iterate on the weapon’s design. That work will inform a concurrent major capability acquisition pathway program the Air Force will start production for in fiscal 2029, according to GAO.

“The program office stated that based on global power competition and urgency to address threats, the Air Force changed the focus of the HACM program from a prototype demonstration to a program that would deliver operational capability in fiscal year 2027,” per the report. “The program stated that, with this shift, it is focused on meeting schedule as the priority and maintaining velocity toward fielding an operationally relevant capability — the minimum viable product that meets user-defined performance requirements — in fiscal year 2027.”

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There has been ongoing debate within the Space Force regarding the military benefit of investing in on-orbit refueling — touted by commercial industry as a key enabler for space mobility that could potentially extend the operational range and capacity of satellites. The service requested $20 million in fiscal 2025 to fund early research and development efforts, but recent comments by leadership have suggested that officials aren’t entirely ready to go all-in.

“I think we’re trying to understand the value proposition of refueling and the trades that come with it. I think it’s entirely appropriate, and we are investing in demonstration and capability with some of our teammates who are peeling this apart — both on the cost side as well as the military advantage,” Lt. Gen. Shawn Bratton, deputy chief of space operations, strategy, plans, programs and requirements, said Thursday during a webinar hosted by the Mitchell Institute.

In theory, refueling tech is favorable for the Space Force’s large, exquisite satellites in geostationary orbit (GEO), as replacing them could take years and cost billions of dollars. But while Bratton said the ability to refuel spacecraft could lead to extending their time on orbit, other components on the satellites have finite lifespans and will eventually fail at some point.

At the same time, the service is pushing for a future where it proliferates hundreds of smaller sats that are cheaper to build and launch — meaning if one space vehicle fails, another in the constellation could take its place. Operating large numbers of platforms with shorter lifespans also means the Space Force can update its architectures with the latest technologies at a faster pace, Bratton added.

The Space Force is currently analyzing the tradeoffs between both strategies, including both operational and cost advantages, Bratton said. And given ongoing fiscal uncertainty and discussions around budget constraints, he noted that if the service decides to put more funding towards in-space refueling it will likely have to be taken away from something else.

“I don’t have the data together yet. I think we’ll have that this fall, based on the ongoing work and then based on the great demonstrations that are going on out there with [Space Systems Command] that is sort of helping us figure this out,” Bratton said.

To help with those assessments, the Space Force is planning a series of projects in the near future focused on experimenting with in-space refueling. 

The service contracted Northrop Grumman in April for a new mission called Elixir, which will involve developing and integrating a refueling payload onto a satellite and demonstrating the technology in space. Separately, the company also recently received a multi-unit award for its ESPAStar spacecraft that will host the refueling demonstration payload during launch.

The Space Force also contracted Astroscale US in April to conduct two refueling operations in GEO in summer 2026. The mission will “demonstrate the ability of commercial Servicing, Mobility and Logistics providers to deliver on-orbit capabilities supporting the warfighter,” a company press release stated. 

Along with the demonstrations, Bratton said he’s looking for additional wargaming and studies of in-space refueling technology that could help determine its value proposition.

“If that is the advantage that refueling brings, then let’s put that into some wargaming, run it through a conflict,” he said. “How much of a difference does it make if I go to war with refueling [or] I go to war without refueling? How do I quantify that advantage? And then we can measure that against the budget choices we have to make.”

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SDA announced the delay for Tranche 1 of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) in a statement on Friday, citing continued supply chain woes as the main contributor to the decision to postpone launch. The agency plans to conduct around one launch per month until all 154 Tranche 1 sats are on orbit.

The news marks yet another setback for SDA, which in recent weeks has been grappling with leadership changes and questions regarding the agency’s semi-independent acquisition authorities. However, the launch delay appears to be caused by supply chain bottlenecks related to the sheer number of satellites the agency plans to put on orbit.

“SDA continues to aggressively work toward the first Tranche 1 launch; however, as we progress through a normal assembly, integration, and testing campaign, with the added challenge of late supplier deliveries, it has become clear additional time is required for system readiness to meet the Tranche 1 minimum viable capability,” the agency said in a statement.

The PWSA is a planned constellation comprising hundreds of satellites stationed in low-Earth orbit. The program is divided into two main mission areas — data relay and communications in the transport layer, and missile warning and tracking in the tracking layer. SDA initially pursued an aggressive acquisition and launch schedule known as “spiral development,” which sought to put new satellites in space every two years.

The agency originally planned to begin launching Tranche 1 — considered the first operational batch of PWSA sats that would provide regional coverage of the Earth — in September 2024. That date was then postponed and re-slated for spring 2025, largely due to supply chain bottlenecks that have been a persistent hurdle in the architecture’s development.

Tranche 1 will consist of 158 satellites, including 126 in the transport layer, 28 in the tracking layer and four “missile defense demonstration” satellites. Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, York Space Systems and L3Harris are all prime contractors on the program.

The number of sats is a stark contrast to previous military space constellations, which historically only included a small quantity of large and exquisite space vehicles. As a result, both SDA and the space industrial base have been challenged to deliver critical parts — including optical communications terminals (OCT) and encryption devices — on time and at the scale needed to launch the PWSA.

“OCTs have experienced some scaling issues, encryption devices are limited and subject to approval outside SDA, propulsion systems were a challenge on [tranche 1] due to business issues as a supplier that several [tranche 1] prime vendors were using,” an SDA official told DefenseScoop on background.

The launch campaign for tranche 1 will begin with the transport layer, the official added. However, the agency has not yet determined which vendor will be the first to go on orbit in summer 2025, or how many space vehicles will be part of the inaugural tranche 1 launch, they said.

SDA emphasized that despite the latest delay in launching Tranche 1, the agency is committed to finishing on-orbit test and checkout of the satellites by mid-2026 and delivering “the entire initial warfighting capability” in early 2027.

“We are conducting enhanced integration checks and testing on the ground between now and the start of launch which helps build a higher degree of operational confidence,” the SDA official said. “It should also smooth out the test and checkout process on orbit to allow us to get to initial warfighting capabilities in 2027, as the warfighter is expecting.”

The official said subsequent launch campaigns for tranches 2 and 3 are still on track, noting that SDA began the acquisition process for tranche 3 earlier to allow for more time between award and launch. Because the supply chain issues impeding tranche 1 are related to scaling up production, the agency believes it will experience fewer delays once the industrial base catches up to SDA’s demand, they added.

“SDA’s top priority is to quickly deliver capabilities promised to the warfighter. Launch is a major milestone but one in a much larger path to delivering viable capabilities. Our goal remains to rapidly deliver functional capabilities with a high degree of operational confidence,” the agency said in a statement.

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“We do not have the industrial capacity built today to get after this,” Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein said Dec. 7 during a panel at the Reagan National Defense Forum. “We’re going to have to start getting comfortable with the lack of efficiency in the industrial base to start getting excess capacity so that we have something to go to in times of crisis and conflict.”

Resilience through proliferation

Historically, the Defense Department tended to develop a few very large and exquisite satellites to conduct critical military missions. But with the growing use of space as a warfighting domain by both the United States and its adversaries, the Pentagon is now focusing on different ways to build resilience in its space systems — such as by launching hundreds of smaller, inexpensive satellites for a single constellation.

At the forefront of the relatively novel approach is the Space Development Agency’s spiral acquisition strategy that is being used for the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA). Once it’s built out, the constellation is expected to comprise hundreds of satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO) and include space vehicles carrying different communications, data relay, missile warning and missile tracking capabilities.

SDA plans to field systems in batches every two years, with each iteration carrying the latest technology available. Although the first operational satellites known as Tranche 1 were slated to launch in fall 2024, that deadline has since been delayed to March or April 2025 due to supply chain bottlenecks, according to SDA Director Derek Tournear.

“I will say that what we’re seeing in the supply chain in the small LEO market has caught up to what SDA’s needs are, but it took them about eight months longer than they anticipated to ramp up,” Tournear said during a panel at the Reagan National Defense Forum. 

A total of 158 satellites are being developed for Tranche 1 of the PWSA: 126 data transport sats, 28 missile warning/missile tracking sats and four missile defense demonstration sats. The agency will also launch 12 tactical demonstration satellites under the Tranche 1 Demonstration and Experimentation System (T1DES) initiative to test new capabilities that can be leveraged in future PWSA tranches.

Across that order, four prime contractors are on the program — York Space Systems, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and L3Harris — and each of them is working with dozens of subcontractors.

Executives from various Tranche 1 primes who spoke to DefenseScoop acknowledged that they encountered supply chain bottlenecks in their work for the contract. Issues have now mostly been resolved and the vendors are on track to launch by the new deadline, they said.

However, companies are still using those lessons learned to mitigate setbacks for future tranches that go beyond just purchasing long-lead items.

“We’re seeing the results of that demand signal that SDA has been sending us on a very consistent basis through their spiral tranche acquisition. Is it perfect yet? No. We’ve got some places to go,” Rob Mitrevski, vice president and general manager of spectral solutions at L3Harris, said in an interview.

Tranche 1 isn’t the first time SDA has experienced delays. The agency was forced to push back the launch of Tranche 0 — a group of 27 satellites that served as a proof of concept for the entire PWSA — by about six months.

The holdup was attributed to supply chain bottlenecks that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic when many manufacturers were forced to slow or stop production lines. Specific microelectronic components such as resistors were particularly difficult to buy, Mitrevski noted.

The recent issues aren’t caused by COVID-19 conditions, but are instead reflective of the sheer volume of systems SDA is asking of its contractors and an industrial base that wasn’t quite ready to meet the increased demand.

“I think a lot of that has been just scaling — getting past designing tens of things to designing lots of things,” Louis Christen, senior director of proliferated systems at Northrop Grumman, said during a tour of the company’s Space Park facility in Redondo Beach, California, where it’s manufacturing Tranche 1 birds.

To alleviate potential risk, Northrop Grumman has been moving through production as much as possible and building multiple satellites in parallel, Christen said. Working very closely with its multiple subcontractors throughout the process has been another critical strategy.

“Although they’re commercial suppliers, we’re not just buying stuff from them. We’re a partner. We’re there on a daily basis and helping prop them up,” he said.

Dirk Wallinger, CEO and president of York Space Systems, said challenges the company had weren’t specific to its Tranche 1 contracts, but actually reflect a lack of diversity in the supply chain that is affecting the entire space industry. 

“One of the key bottlenecks results from [requests for proposals] with subsystem performance specifications that inadvertently narrow the qualified vendor pool to a single supplier,” Wallinger told DefenseScoop. “This limits the value tradeoffs of all of the prime contractors and by creating dependency on sole-source suppliers, exacerbates delays.”

Addressing the problem would require rethinking high-level performance requirements in a manner that would diversify the supplier base and enable more competition in industry, he added.

L3Harris is also trying to move away from single or sole-source suppliers by building strong relationships with the swath of subcontractors it has worked with on all three of its contracts for the PWSA, Mitrevski said.

“The supply chain works to create scale over time, and the scale is created through a diverse group of suppliers,” he said. “What you’ve seen in the way we’ve evolved from [Tranche 0] through now [Tranche 1] and [Tranche 2] is a continual improvement of the scale and diversity in that supply chain.”

Wallinger noted that they’ve found the most effective way to mitigate supply chain risks has been to buy satellite buses from providers ahead of receiving mission specifications. In the future, it’s crucial that the government secures these long-lead items as early as possible to effectively eliminate delays, he added.

“Schedule risk is mostly induced from bus component suppliers, not mission payload developers,” Wallinger said. “Commoditized satellite buses are the only ones being considered, and by definition can support a range of mission sets. They are the critical component to procure in advance.”

Mitigating future delays

While SDA has tried to ensure its system requirements can leverage readily available hardware, Tournear said there are some components that must be tailor-made for the Tranche 1 satellites. Mesh network encryption devices that are approved by the National Security Agency have been a significant headache because there’s only one manufacturer able to make them, he said.

The agency has adjusted its timeline expectations for future PWSA tranches to allow more time for vendors to build their platforms, adding several months to overall production time.

Mitrevski also noted that SDA’s overall strategy to fund development of capabilities that can be tested early on is beneficial. 

“They have a number of efforts where they’ve clearly acquired leading-edge capabilities with the intention of driving the maturity level of those leading-edge capabilities forward and then make use of them later on,” he said. 

York Space Systems has also discussed with SDA ways to mitigate risks outside of supply chain diversification, Wallinger said. One area of improvement could be ensuring long-lead items are aligned with current and future mission requirements, he noted.

“We have had several instances where the second- and third-tier suppliers had stock on hand, but that stock didn’t have the right interface protocols or didn’t have the right form factor, and couldn’t be used to meet the actual mission needs,” he said. “So you had those suppliers spending capital on things that simply had to be completely redone at a cost to the [U.S. government] and us.”

But with plans to only grow the number of military satellites on orbit — not just for the PWSA, but also other programs across the Defense Department — SDA’s work is likely going to create a ripple effect of both growth and demand within the industrial base. The supply chain woes are serving as a “canary in the coal mine” for the national security space community writ large, and will require the entire department’s effort to fix them, Guetlein said.

“Because of the quantities that he’s ordering, he’s now starting to uncover the challenges that we have with the industrial base,” Guetlein said, referring to Tournear. “And these challenges are significant, and we need to figure out how to get after them.”

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Built by Northrop Grumman and launched by SpaceX in August, the two-satellite constellation includes two Enhanced Polar System — Recapitalization (EPS-R) payloads and others for Space Norway, a state-owned firm that develops and manages space-based services for government and commercial use. The satellites are intended to operate in a highly elliptical orbit to provide satcom capabilities for both commercial and military applications in the Arctic region.

The EPS-R payloads hosted on ASBM are expected to add to the capacity of Enhanced Polar System (EPS) payloads currently on orbit, extending the Pentagon’s satcom capability in the Arctic region until the U.S. Space Force’s Protected Tactical SATCOM (PTS) system is fielded in the early 2030s, according to the Defense Department.

In addition, Northrop Grumman upgraded its ground system that’s used to operate the older EPS satellites with a common baseline software. The upgrades allow for both EPS and EPS-R on the same architecture, “eliminating the need for training on two separate control systems,” a company press release stated.

The ASBM constellation includes systems for the Norwegian Ministry of Defense and Viasat that will boost X-band and Ka-band connectivity in the Arctic, and others for the Norwegian Radiation Monitor to provide data on highly elliptical orbits, according to the contractor.

“Thanks to a bold vision from our customers — and enabled by Northrop Grumman’s end-to-end capabilities, deep mission understanding and unmatched MILSATCOM legacy — our service members and allies can now count on reliable, secure communications in this strategically important region while next-generation systems are developed,” Blake Bullock, vice president of military space systems at Northrop Grumman, said in a statement.

While the ASBM satellite contributes to the Defense Department’s effort to increase operational capacity in the Arctic, it also marked the first time a U.S. military payload was hosted on an international commercial space mission — a key step forward in the United States’ efforts to strengthen collaboration with international allies in space.

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The Deep-Sensing and Targeting (DSaT) capability is a multi-domain tool that’s integrated into a civilian aircraft for intelligence collection beyond the visual line of sight.

The system was put through its paces at the Army’s Vanguard 24, an annual capstone event testing various technologies and prototypes to integrate them into intelligence system architectures for evaluation and to inform decisions about whether they’ll become future Army programs of record.

Northrop is trying to help the Army address some of the challenges associated with its long-range precision fires mission.

“What we were identifying on our side is that they have challenges with over-the-horizon capabilities,” Brent Swift, director of Northrop Grumman’s mission exploitation operating unit, said in an interview. “If you think about the ability for a multi-domain conflict, you’re not constrained by terrestrial ground, sea or space. In this instance, we’re particularly exploiting an airborne-type capability. If you think about the ability to extend your capabilities over the constraints that you deal with from a sea or terrestrial perspective, DSaT and being airborne is a game changer for the Army that typically focuses on terrestrial or ground-based capability. That’s the difference maker that I think DSaT has.”

The contractor provided the Army’s pre-prototypes for the Tactical Intelligence Targeting Access Node (TITAN) system, before the official program of record, leveraging that ground work to mount DSaT on a jet aircraft.

“DSaT is really taking a ground station, putting it on an airborne platform and really processing that intelligence data, moving the needle from a multi-domain perspective and then getting the warfighter the data faster than they’ve ever had it before,” Swift said. “It’s designed to pull down commercial and military data from space-based capabilities. Basically, we’re putting it in a form factor that will integrate into commercial aircraft versus what we typically have from a large, robust ground site.”

A jet provides the advantage of seeing over the horizon and increasing the range. “That’s really what puts the decision data in the hands of the shooter for their target nominations,” he said.

“You’re kind of limited on a terrestrial ground site by the line of sight that you have. And putting it airborne into that aircraft gets you over that horizon, visual line of sight, and then you’re able to exploit the sensors that are on that aircraft,” Swift added.

While he declined to comment on the acquisition and program of record for the Army’s High Accuracy Detection and Exploitation System (HADES) system — the service’s business jet program to conduct intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance — Swift suggested the capabilities that DSaT provides would aid that program.

“When you think about some of the [military’s] areas of responsibility and how they execute their missions, we saw a need for where they were going with their HADES program and how we could potentially help them move the needle from having an airborne-type direct downlink capability,” he said. “When we think about the types of missions HADES would support and perform, we identify that it could potentially leverage our capabilities. We’ll certainly propose the ability to leverage that capability, but ultimately, the customer has a decision on how they acquire and how they close the loop on that mission it’s going to support.”

While not officially on contract for a program for DSaT, Northrop has been awarded prototyping money to continue testing the system.

The work at Vanguard 24 built upon prior work the company did at the Army’s EDGE experiment last year.

Swift said the organization used surrogate jets to fly DSaT at Vanguard and tested communications with the intelligence data on the aircraft, then disseminated it to the exercise operators.

He declined to offer more specific details regarding what the system did at the exercise but noted the company delivered on objectives, leveraging space-based data to deliver targeting nominations, took line of sight and beyond-line-of-sight capabilities to ensure they could continuously communicate, and then demonstrated how to insert and integrate AI technologies.

Swift added that during this go-round they used artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities “that directly improved efficiency, accuracy, speed to deliver data into the hands of the operator.”

Following Vanguard, Northrop anticipates follow-on DSaT activity for more engineering.

“We want to continue to put what’s within the possibility in front of the decision makers to help them understand how they can close the kill chain,” he said.

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The GPI program looks to develop a system that can intercept and defeat incoming hypersonics while they are flying through the edges of the Earth’s atmosphere, also known as the glide phase. The missiles will be fired from Aegis-equipped U.S. Navy destroyers and the Aegis Ashore system.

The U.S. Missile Defense Agency — which is leading the program in partnership with Japan’s Ministry of Defense — expects Northrop Grumman’s selection to result in follow-on development and production, according to the agency.

“Today’s decision represents a turning point for hypersonic glide phase defense,” MDA Director Lt. Gen. Heath Collins said in a statement. “I’m very proud of the entire team including our industry partners, for all the hard work to get to this point. It is also an honor to have Japan as our partner as we move forward on this critical counter-hypersonic capability.”

Hypersonic missile defense has been a modernization priority for the Pentagon, as key adversaries such as China and Russia advance development of their own systems. The weapons are able to reach speeds of Mach 5 or greater and maneuver through the Earth’s atmosphere, making it difficult for traditional air defense systems to intercept them.

Washington and Tokyo signed an official GPI cooperative development project arrangement for the program in May, which tasked Japan to lead development of rocket motors and propulsion components for GPI, according to the Defense Department.

Northrop Grumman beat out RTX for the continued development work. Both companies received other transaction agreements (OTAs) for the program in 2022 after Lockheed Martin was booted from the effort. In 2023, the agency transitioned both Northrop and RTX’s designs for the GPI program to the “technology development phase” — equivalent to a Milestone A decision.

The agency requested $182 million for GPI in its fiscal 2025 budget request. It plans for the missiles to reach initial operational capability by the end of 2029 and full operational capability by the 2030s.

Under its existing OTA contract, Northrop Grumman will continue to refine GPI’s preliminary design; demonstrate system performance in hypersonic environments ahead of the program’s preliminary design review; conduct company-led flight experiments; and leverage digital engineering tools to accelerate the design process, the company said in a release.

Northrop’s GPI design features advanced “seeker for threat tracking and hit-to-kill accuracy, a re-ignitable upper stage engine used for threat containment and a dual engagement mode to engage threats across a wide range of altitudes,” according to the contractor.

“GPI adds mission critical standoff to warfighters in scenarios where distance creates an advantage. Tailorable to a multitude of mission requirements, Northrop Grumman’s revolutionary solution is designed to perform in the evolving threat landscape,” Wendy Williams, Northrop Grumman’s vice president and manager of launch and missile defense systems, said in a statement.

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During the test, the contractor for the first time connected its hybrid SATCOM terminals to two commercial internet satellite systems — one stationed in low-Earth orbit (LEO) and another in geosynchronous orbit (GEO), according to the firm. The demonstration was the company’s first for AFRL’s Defense Experimentation Using Commercial Space Internet (DEUCSI) effort, also known as Global Lightning.

“Northrop Grumman is responding to the U.S. Air Force’s need for rapid deployment of resilient communications to develop and field the technologies required by our warfighters to meet today’s challenging missions,” Steven Conn, the company’s director of advanced communications and signals intelligence, said in a statement. “This successful test, leveraging a diverse team of commercial and defense SATCOM providers, is critical for the pace of maturity on the Global Lightning program and the ability to begin flight testing in the near future.”

At the July demonstration, Northrop Grumman established connectivity between its hybrid SATCOM terminals to a commercial proliferated LEO communications provider at Ku frequencies, as well as with the ViaSat F1 satellite in GEO at Ka frequencies. The event validated ubiquitous communications and the ability to rapidly switch between constellation systems and orbital regimes, according to the organization.

Global Lightning looks to leverage commercial space internet services to establish path-agnostic communications for warfighters. The program is linked to the Pentagon’s Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2) effort, which aims to connect disparate systems across the battlespace under a single network to enable rapid data transfer between all warfighting domains.

AFRL has given awards to various defense contractors and commercial SATCOM providers for the effort in recent years. In 2023, Northrop Grumman received a four-year, $80.3 million contract from the research lab to execute the demonstrations as part of its “call 3” phase that will demonstrate connectivity between military platforms and commercial space internet constellations across two use cases — communications in the Arctic region and airborne comms.

L3Harris also received a three-year deal worth $80.8 million to perform work on the call 3 exercises for Global Lightning. The company announced Sept. 10 it had completed a critical design review for its Rapidly Adaptable Standards-compliant Open Radio (RASOR) capability that will be used to test connectivity between military platforms and commercial space internet.

“Following this successful CDR, we plan on conducting integrated hardware testing within the next year to support Air Force flight tests currently scheduled to begin at the end of 2025,” Adam Milner, L3Harris’s senior manager of space networks, said in a statement.

Viasat, SES Space & Defense, SpaceX, OneWeb and Telesat are among the commercial SATCOM providers that have been contracted for the Global Lightning program since it began.

Meanwhile, AFRL is already looking forward to future demonstrations. Viasat announced Tuesday that it received a $33.6 million contract from the research lab to develop and deliver active electronically scanned array (AESA) systems as part of Global Lightning’s “call 4” phase.

The commercial AESA antennas are expected to support communications for tactical aircraft and enable connectivity across multiple frequencies, orbits and commercial networks.

“We believe hybrid resilient communication solutions are central to future government mobility operations and our teams are committed to continuing to help solve these multi-band, multi-orbit, multi-constellation interoperability challenges with high performance, cost-effective capabilities,” Michael Maughan, Viasat Government’s vice president of space and mission systems, said in a statement.

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Under development by Northrop Grumman, DARC is an all-weather, ground-based radar system designed to detect and track objects moving through geosynchronous orbit — over 22,000 miles above the Earth’s equator. Expected to serve as a key capability for the U.S. military’s space domain awareness mission, the service plans to position three radars around the world as part of the AUKUS alliance between the United States, United Kingdom and Australia.

“With a growing number of space debris and objects now populating Earth’s orbit, DARC technologies detect small space objects and satellites quickly and with highly precise orbital information. DARC also identifies adversarial threats with the potential to disrupt/deny civil and military space services, making it a vital defense technology for the Space Force,” Col. Bryon McClain, program executive officer for space domain awareness and combat power, said in a statement Aug. 26.

Contracts posted on the Defense Department’s website Friday detail that the new award to Northrop Grumman will entail “design, integration, and testing of the second DARC radar site” that will be completed by February 2030.

According to the U.K. Ministry of Defence, DARC Site 2 will be located at Cawdor Barracks in Pembrokeshire, Wales. The military installation has been home to the British Army’s electronic warfare unit — 14 Signal Regiment — since 1995. In 2016, the U.K.’s Ministry of Defence announced that the military installation would close by 2028.

However, now that it will host DARC Site 2, Cawdor Barracks will remain open and undergo redevelopment to support the radar and up to 100 personnel who will operate and maintain it, according to the MOD.

“Space plays a crucial role in our daily lives — used by everything from our mobile phones to banking services. It is also used by UK Defence to conduct vital tasks such as supporting military operations, navigating forces and gathering intelligence,” U.K. Defence Secretary John Healey said in a statement. “This new radar programme will not only enhance our awareness of deep space, but also help protect our space assets alongside our closest partners.”

The Space Force announced a trilateral agreement with the other two AUKUS nations in December 2023 that would allow the U.K. and Australia to each host and operate one of the next-generation radars within their borders. Together, the DARC radars will create a network of sensors and allow the three countries to jointly conduct space domain awareness operations.

“As the space domain rapidly evolves, we must continue taking deliberate steps to ensure our collective ability to operate safely, and our nations are uniquely positioned to provide that capability on a global scale,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said in a statement following the announcement of the trilateral agreement.

Current ground-based radars have limited capability in tracking objects in space during the day and are often affected by weather conditions. DARC is expected to give the Space Force and its partners global 24/7 coverage to detect, track, identify and analyze objects in deep space no matter the time of day or environmental conditions.

“The DARC Site 2 award expands Northrop Grumman’s support for the U.S. Space Force’s Space Domain Awareness (SDA) capabilities in an increasingly contested domain. This site brings us closer to achieving global coverage of deep space, which is a critical mission for future security of the U.S. and its allies,” Pablo Pezzimenti, the company’s vice president of integrated national systems, said in a statement Aug. 26.

The Space Force awarded Northrop Grumman a $341 million contract in 2022 for the first DARC site, which will be located in Exmouth in Western Australia and is expected to be completed in 2026. The Space Force did not provide information as to where the third radar will be constructed in the United States, but the service has previously said all three systems will be completed by 2030.

Updated on Aug. 26, 2024, at 3:25 PM: This story has been updated to include statements from Space Force Col. Bryon McClain and Northrop Grumman’s Pablo Pezzimenti.

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The Arctic Satellite Broadband Mission (ASBM) constellation, which includes two sats, was sent into orbit via a Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base, California. The systems — built by Northrop Grumman — will operate in a highly elliptical orbit and provide comms for both commercial and military applications in the High North, according to a company press release.

The launch marks the first time an operational U.S. military payload is being hosted on a commercial satellite operated by a foreign partner, according to the Space Force — a key milestone in the United States’ effort to strengthen collaboration with international allies in the space domain.

Included in the constellation are two Enhanced Polar System — Recapitalization (EPS-R) secure communications payloads for the U.S. Space Force. Also built by Northrop Grumman, the payloads will extend current satellite communications capability in the Arctic region until the service’s next-generation Protected Tactical SATCOM (PTS) system is fielded in the early 2030s, according to the Department of Defense.

“Northrop Grumman’s end-to-end mission expertise and proven ability to deliver cutting-edge technology on orbit enables our customers’ most challenging missions,” Rob Fleming, corporate vice president and president of Northrop Grumman Space Systems, said in a statement. “Our team came together at every stage of design, test and integration to bring commercial broadband and protected military satellite communications to the Arctic for many years to come.”

Improving connectivity in the austere Arctic region is a centerpiece of the Defense Department’s 2024 Arctic Strategy, published in July. The strategy calls on the Pentagon to leverage space-based communications infrastructure that can bolster its ability to operate in environments above 65 degrees North latitude.

“In addition to military satellite communications solutions to improve tactical and strategic communications, specifically above 65 degrees North latitude, DoD should pursue technology through commercial partners and agreements with NATO Allies and partners,” the strategy stated.

Space Norway is a state-owned firm that manages and develops space-based infrastructure and services for government and commercial uses. Along with the two EPS-R payloads for the Space Force, the ASBM constellation also includes an X-band payload for Norway’s armed forces and a Ka-band payload for commercial satellite operator Viasat, according to Northrop Grumman.

A company fact sheet noted that a secure payload interface isolates the EPS-R payloads from the rest of the satellite constellation, “paving the way for future hybrid military-commercial launches and bringing down the cost of distributing capabilities.”

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