Space Force targeting more affordable GPS satellites 

The Space Force wants its next fleet of GPS satellites to be smaller, cheaper and more resilient — and it’s looking to a mix of commercial and defense firms to help design those spacecraft.

Four companies — Sierra Space, L3Harris, Astranis and Axient, which was recently acquired by Astrion — won study contracts in late September to draft early concepts for the Space Force’s Resilient GPS program, or R-GPS. In five to eight months, the service plans to choose at least two companies to finalize their designs and build prototypes. It will then pick one or more firms to build the first eight satellites, which it wants ready for launch by 2028.

The program, expected to cost $1 billion over the next five years, comes amid growing concern from Pentagon and other government leaders about GPS vulnerability. The system, which guides weapons and helps military units navigate, has been a target for Russia in its war with Ukraine, using electronic warfare to jam signals on a regular basis. Users have also reported increased spoofing incidents, a method of manipulating GPS data to confuse a receiver about its location. This can be done using relatively cheap software-defined radios.

The Space Force is targeting $50 to $80 million per satellite — a fraction of the $250 million it costs for just one Lockheed Martin-build GPS IIIF spacecraft. That lower unit cost will allow the service to launch dozens of satellites designed to fly for about five years that can be upgraded with new capabilities on a regular cycle.

The approach is modeled off the Space Development Agency’s strategy for fielding large constellations of small missile tracking and data transport satellites and is one that the Space Force wants to apply to other missions, like space domain awareness. Proliferation, and the lower unit costs that help enable it, is what the service hopes will bring resiliency to these constellations.

For GPS, larger numbers of small satellites augmenting the larger spacecraft that make up the current constellation should make it harder for enemies to target the fleet and will ensure there’s a backup capability when they do, the Space Force says. The satellites will have a range of civil signals as well as M-code, a more secure military signal with anti-jam capabilities.

Designing for affordability

The firms tapped to draw up concepts for the program told Defense News they’re trying to balance affordability with enhanced capabilities as they consider satellite design options.

Erik Daehler, vice president of defense, satellites and spacecraft systems at Sierra Space, said the company’s approach involves designing modular spacecraft with payloads that could be upgraded through on-orbit software upgrades or swapped out in future development blocks.

That sort of flexible design, he said, could allow the Space Force to launch groups of satellites carrying different payloads.

“The idea is to stay in front of the adversary’s evolution and, in fact, get ahead of them so they don’t know what’s launching on each satellite that we put up,” Daehler said.

In a more traditional development program, it can take years to add new capability onto a hot production line of more complex satellites. Sierra Space wants to make that process more seamless, which Daehler said should ultimately make it more affordable.

“We want to make it so that the capability is an order of magnitude less expensive than the existing constellation and be able to be upgraded every time you have a LEAP with minimal impacts,” he said.

While designing the satellite for flexibility, the company is also prepared to draw a hard line on what’s known as “requirements creep” — the tendency for the Defense Department or other customers to change requirements in a way that drives major changes to a system’s design.

“We’re not redesigning the platform dramatically to match a payload,” Daehler said. “Instead, we’re saying, this is the payload capacity you can put on the platform.”

L3Harris, a key player in U.S. positioning, navigation and timing programs for the last 50 years, plans to draw from that experience in its R-GPS design. The company is the prime contractor for the Air Force Research Laboratory’s experimental PNT program, Navigation Technology Satellite-3, or NTS-3, which is slated to launch in the coming months.

“We’re really excited to see that get on orbit and start demonstrating the advanced capabilities that come from our ability to leverage our heritage and pivot into something that’s new and innovative,” Andrew Builta, vice president of the company’s space payload and constellation portfolio, told Defense News. “With Resilient GPS, our intent is to marry those two things.”

L3Harris hasn’t announced its program partners, but Builta said it is looking to commercial suppliers for things like its satellite bus and is looking at ways to keep its schedule as tight as possible.

“One of the key tasks we have in these early phases is to evaluate the market from a bus perspective,” he said. “What is the true timeline for us to be able to go out and procure the materials and get through testing and all the things that you need to be able to launch a system and ensure that it works on orbit as opposed to a demo or an experiment?”

Kent Nickle, executive director of rapid integrated space solutions at Astrion, said the company is aiming to drive down cost by developing a modular satellite designed to “do a little bit of everything.”

In the initial study phase, the systems engineering firm is looking for the right approach to meet the program’s baseline requirements and potentially build on them with more capability, like boosted M-code and regional military protection, which provides additional anti-jam technology.

Astrion’s R-GPS supplier team includes K2 Space, a startup that will provide a satellite bus. Radiance Technologies will build the payload and STC will help with architecture and integration.

Nickle, who worked in the Air Force’s space launch enterprise for more than 15 years, said the Space Force’s approach to R-GPS makes it easier for smaller, non-traditional firms to be involved in the program.

“If it was a traditional winner-take-all type of thing, the government’s going to be less inclined to take risks,” he said. “They’ve allowed other companies to participate which, in the end, benefits the entire industry, but benefits the government too.”

Astranis is one of those firms that’s new to the PNT mission. Founded in 2015, the company’s focus is on building small, maneuverable satellites for higher orbits, equipping them with top-notch digital processing capabilities.

CEO John Gedmark told Defense News that when the Space Force started soliciting ideas for R-GPS early this year, the company took some time to consider whether its existing satellite bus and elements of its payload were the right fit for the mission.

“After we spent some time really digging in on it, the answer was yes,” Gedmark said. “So, we’re leaning forward on it, and we see huge potential here.”

Astranis is proposing its new line of satellites, Nexus, for R-GPS. It already has orders from customers for more than 10 satellites, and Gedmark said the company is preparing its production facilities to build “many dozens” of satellites in the next few years. The firm has partnered with Xona Space Systems to provide PNT algorithms for its payload.

Funding stability

The Space Force’s R-GPS strategy emphasizes speed, evidenced in its plan to launch the first satellites within four years.

In April, the Air Force announced it would use authority from Congress to shift $40 million in funding from elsewhere in the Space Force’s budget to begin development on Resilient R-GPS before it’s approved as part of the fiscal 2025 budget cycle. Those authorities, known as quick-start, were approved in the Fiscal 2024 National Defense Authorization Act.

Some in Congress have been skeptical of the effort, questioning whether the quick-start process is the best pathway. The House Appropriations defense subcommittee proposed cutting the program’s budget request in its mark of the FY25 defense spending bill.

“While proliferation may provide some advantages, it is not clear how these additional satellites increase the resilience against the primary jamming threat to GPS, compared to alternative concepts for position, navigation, and timing systems being pursued elsewhere in the Department of Defense,” lawmakers said in a report accompanying the bill, released June 12.

Cordell DeLaPena, Space Systems Command’s program executive officer for military communication and PNT, told reporters last month the service is working with the subcommittee to address their concerns. While there’s been progress, he said, there are still several open issues, including concerns about whether there are enough terminals available to support more GPS satellites.

“Every time we speak to the [lawmakers], we move the ball a little bit,” he said.