Officials hedge SpaceX aircraft-tracking satellite bet with three smaller company contracts

Three more companies will get Space Force money to build satellites that can track aircraft, a move meant to reduce the service’s reliance on SpaceX for the capability.

Rocket Lab and STR were awarded firm-fixed-price other-transaction-authority agreements to develop a space-based solution for the military’s airborne moving target indicator mission, or AMTI. A third company was also selected, but officials didn’t name the firm in a press release this week due to “operational security.” More than two months ago, the service awarded SpaceX a $4.16 billion contract to build the emerging technology. 

Col. Ryan Frazier, acting Space Force Portfolio Acquisition Executive for space-based sensing and targeting, said the service didn’t want to put all its eggs in one basket.

"The core focus of this second task order is diversifying our capabilities and ensuring we don't rely on a single technical solution,” Frazier said in the news release. “With these new partnerships, we are exploring unique innovations and technologies and fundamentally different ways to accomplish the airborne moving target indication mission. Maturing these varied technical solutions now gives us distinct performance advantages for the future and guarantees we are fielding the absolute best technology available."

Attention to space-based AMTI has grown after an expensive E-3 Sentry AWACS was heavily damaged during the first weeks of the Iran war. Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said the following month that the incident illustrated the “importance of a survivable platform” and the service later announced it had chosen nine companies to make up the vendor pool for AMTI contracts, but declined to name them. As well, Pentagon leaders who had argued that they didn’t need both air- and space-based AMTI have resumed backing a next-generation airborne warning platform.

The three new space-based AMTI contracts total $615 million, a mere fraction of the $4 billion given to SpaceX. The bulk of the money, $397 million, went to Rocket Lab, per the company’s press release. The California-based company said it would build and launch its “Flatellites” — a flat satellite to be used in large constellations. 

“A resilient space architecture demands a robust, competitive industrial base, and tapping into the broader commercial market is how we get there,” Frazier said. 

It’s not clear what STR or the other unnamed company were building for the space-based system. SpaceX officials, during the company’s most recent earnings call, acknowledged the competition.

“You can look at those as tranches and beginnings of additional capability that we will bring online, some of which we will have to compete,” said Gwynne Shotwell, the company’s president and CEO. “But fundamentally, we have the contracts in place to fulfill many phenomenologies, both the ones we’ve recently announced as well as additional ones that we’ll be working on going forward.”