Space Force missile warning competition robust despite RTX exit

After canceling its contract with RTX to build three missile tracking satellites, cutting its existing contractor pool from three companies to two, the Space Force is confident it can retain competition on the program moving forward.

The service made the decision in June to remove RTX, formerly Raytheon, from its Resilient Missile Warning and Tracking program due to underperformance from the contractor and concerns about schedule risk. Breaking Defense reported at the time that the Space Force was worried about satellite design challenges and the potential for a future launch delay.

RTX’s contract was worth up to $727 million to build three satellites as part of the program’s first phase. The choice to pull the plug on that deal leaves the Space Force with just two companies — Millennium Space Systems and L3Harris — to build out its missile tracking capability in medium Earth orbit, located between 1,200 and 22,000 miles above sea level.

Col. Rob Davis, who oversees space sensing programs within Space Systems Command — the Space Force’s acquisition hub — said cutting RTX from the program was a “tough choice,” but a necessary one. Speaking during a July 25 National Security Space Association event, he said even with a reduced field, competition for future program iterations is strong.

“There’s no shortage of competition in the market,” Davis said.

The Resilient Missile Warning and Tracking program’s medium Earth orbit, or MEO, satellites are just one piece of the Space Force’s plan to bolster its missile-warning and -tracking capabilities against increasing threats from China and Russia.

Today, the Defense Department’s space-based missile warning constellation is made up of a handful of large satellites that mostly reside in geosynchronous orbit, about 22,000 miles away. Their large size and small numbers make them vulnerable to attack — and their sensors and positioning make it harder for them to track advanced weapons like hypersonic missiles.

For those reasons, the service is in the midst of a multiyear, multibillion-dollar effort to change the makeup of its missile tracking architecture , launching smaller, cheaper satellites to lower orbits, like MEO, allowing it to observe large areas without requiring the same level of complexity from sensors positioned farther from the planet.

Because the satellites are less expensive, they’ll have a shorter life on orbit and the service plans to field new batches, which it calls epochs, every three years.

The plan to refresh its missile warning satellite technology on a regular cadence, which mirrors a similar strategy from the Space Development Agency to launch missile tracking spacecraft into low Earth orbit, requires a strong industrial base. The Space Force’s strategy is to continuously stage competition for new companies to enter its supplier pool.

The first MEO spacecraft are slated to launch in 2026, and the Space Force expects to have four satellites on orbit by 2028.

Davis noted that as the service prepares to issue a solicitation for its next epoch of MEO satellites later this month or in early August, it’s had a good response from companies.

In the meantime, the Space Force is working to mitigate the impact of the RTX contract cancellation, Davis said, and is exploring options to reallocate epoch 1 funds to keep the effort on schedule.

Millennium, a Boeing subsidiary, is on contract to deliver six satellites through a $412 million contract awarded in 2021. The service tapped L3Harris in June 2023 under a $29 million contract to develop a prototype for the program. The contract included options to buy up to three satellites for epoch 1.

Davis would not confirm whether the service plans to buy more satellites from either vendor to make up for the three that RTX was slated to provide.

“We are pivoting there, and we’re currently evaluating different options to consider as to how to utilize these resources we had previously planned to spend on development of the one vendor,” he said. “We’re looking at how do we make sure that we continue to pace the program and get that initial warfighting capability, that missile tracking capability the nation doesn’t have today — how do we get that out there as quickly as possible?”