06/30/2026

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By Sandra Erwin

Welcome to this week's edition of SpaceNews' Military Space, your source for the latest developments at the intersection of space and national security. In this week's edition: Rocket Lab’s strategic bet; Boeing gets a piece of MUOS; and the Army's new space branch.

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Lockheed Martin announced it is speeding up development of a hypersonic glide vehicle, called Next Generation Glide Body, designed to be mass produced. The company said a flight demonstration is scheduled for 2027 to validate its performance. The NXGB, developed through internal investments, is designed to be launched from multiple platforms. Credit: Lockheed Martin

Army creates dedicated space branch, clarifying role alongside Space Force

The U.S. Army formally established a Space Operations Branch that creates a permanent career home for its space professionals rather than treating space assignments as temporary specialties.

Announced last week, the new branch brings together Functional Area 40A Space Operations officers and the newly created 40D enlisted Tactical Space Operations Specialists into a single career field. According to the Army, this will provide the space expertise needed to support communications, navigation, missile warning, targeting and force protection in ground operations.

A shift in how the service develops space expertise

Until now, the Army maintained a cadre of space officers but relied on enlisted personnel from Air Defense Artillery, Signal and Military Intelligence to rotate through space assignments before returning to their parent branches. The new 40D military occupational specialty creates a permanent enlisted career path, allowing the Army to recruit, train and retain space specialists over the long term.

The change reflects the view that space has become a core element of modern warfare rather than a niche support function. In practical terms, it is similar to the evolution from borrowing cyber specialists from existing career fields to establishing a dedicated cyber branch.

The announcement also comes as the Army expands its role in multidomain operations, where space-based capabilities underpin everything from communications and positioning to missile defense and long-range targeting. Army officials have emphasized that the new branch is intended to strengthen the service's ability to integrate space capabilities into ground operations, not duplicate the Space Force's responsibilities.

"The Army's new space operations branch reflects a division of labor rather than a duplication of effort, as the Army and the Space Force pursue fundamentally different missions," said Col. Pete Atkinson, the Army's senior space adviser.

While the Space Force is responsible for organizing, training and equipping forces to secure U.S. interests in the space domain, Army space professionals are trained to integrate space capabilities into land operations and interdict adversaries' use of space for hostile purposes. That distinction, officials said, is becoming more important as potential adversaries field sophisticated space-enabled capabilities designed to locate and target ground forces.

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Rocket Lab's Iridium deal strengthens its position in national security space

Rocket Lab has struck the biggest deal in its history, agreeing to acquire communications satellite operator Iridium for $8 billion. The acquisition would turn Rocket Lab into a global satcom operator and broaden its national security portfolio.

“While spectrum is the central asset, Iridium brings much more to the table for Rocket Lab than just spectrum. Iridium’s additional resources include its new alternative position navigation and timing, standard-based narrow-band non-terrestrial networking, ADS-B flight tracking via Aireon, satellite voice and several major Department of Defense contracts,” William Blair equity research analysts said on Monday.

Iridium has provided satellite voice and data services to the U.S. military for more than two decades under the Enhanced Mobile Satellite Services (EMSS) contract. Its handheld satellite phones, push-to-talk devices and data terminals are used by U.S. forces operating beyond the reach of terrestrial communications. Unlike cellular networks, Iridium's low Earth orbit constellation provides global coverage, including the Arctic, making it a critical communications system for deployed forces, special operations units, ships and aircraft.

One of the acquisition's most strategically important assets is Iridium's positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) capability. Its satellite-based PNT service is designed to complement GPS by providing an independent source of timing and positioning if GPS becomes unavailable or unreliable.

The acquisition also gives Rocket Lab control of Iridium's L-band spectrum, a scarce asset well suited for safety-of-life, government and military communications. Because spectrum licenses are difficult to obtain, they represent one of Iridium's most valuable long-term assets. Rocket Lab could use that spectrum to expand communications, PNT, Internet of Things and direct-to-device services.

Iridium's next-generation direct-to-device capability also carries defense implications. The ability to communicate directly with conventional mobile devices or lightweight terminals without relying on terrestrial infrastructure could prove valuable during combat operations, disaster response or attacks on communications networks.

Strategically, the acquisition gives Rocket Lab capabilities across nearly every major segment of the national security space sector, including spacecraft manufacturing, launch services, optical payloads through its acquisition of Geost, laser communications technology through Mynaric, satellite operations, communications services, L-band spectrum and PNT capabilities.

This would be a remarkable final chapter for Iridium, whose satellite network survived a spectacular bankruptcy in 1999 and was rebuilt in part on the strength of long-term Pentagon communications contracts.

Iridium Communications' original venture, backed by Motorola, filed for bankruptcy in 1999 after failing to attract enough commercial subscribers.

There were serious discussions about deorbiting the constellation because it was too expensive to maintain. In 2000, a group of investors bought Iridium's assets out of bankruptcy. Crucially, the Defense Department committed to becoming a major long-term customer through service contracts. Those contracts provided stable revenue that helped make Iridium commercially viable.

Boeing breaks Lockheed’s hold on MUOS

The Space Force awarded Boeing a $2 billion contract to build two Mobile User Objective System satellites, giving the company a major role in a military communications program long dominated by Lockheed Martin.

The Space Force selected Boeing in a head-to-head contest for the MUOS service-life-extension satellites, which are intended to add capacity and extend the operational life of the narrowband network into the 2030s.

Lockheed built all five satellites in the current MUOS constellation, a Navy-developed network that gives U.S. and allied forces secure narrowband voice and data links through ultra-high-frequency satellites in geostationary orbit. The system, often described as a cellphone network in space, supports troops, ships, aircraft and special operations forces operating with relatively small terminals in remote or contested environments.

The first MUOS satellite launched in 2012. The Space Force inherited the system from the Navy in 2023 and is now moving to preserve that capability even as commercial satellite communications options expand.

Boeing’s design will use the company’s 702MP spacecraft bus, an established geostationary platform also used for commercial communications satellites and adapted for the Space Force’s Wideband Global Satcom (WGS) program.

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