By Mike Gruss
SpaceX’s IPO is nigh.
And somehow Elon Musk’s company has also been in the news this week for non-IPO items. That includes its plans for Starfall reentry vehicles, the latest Starship launch or questions about restrictions on Starlink.
But what should not be overlooked is that the company also had a monster week with a pair of Space Force contracts.
First, the service awarded SpaceX a $4.16 billion contract to build a constellation of satellites designed to track airborne targets from orbit.
The agreement, announced May 29, covers the first increment of a space-based Air Moving Target Indicator, or AMTI, network. The program is intended to detect, track and maintain custody of airborne targets including fighter aircraft, bombers, cruise missiles and potentially hypersonic weapons.
The contract represents a significant step in a broader Pentagon effort to move military sensing functions traditionally performed by aircraft into proliferated satellite constellations.
Second, the U.S. Space Force awarded SpaceX a $2.29 billion contract to build a network of low Earth orbit satellites intended to function as a military internet in space.
This contract is for the development of a network known as the Space Data Network Backbone, a series of optically interconnected satellites that would transport military data through space rather than relying primarily on terrestrial relay networks or ground stations.
SpaceX will build the system using its Starshield satellites, but the constellation will be operated by the Space Force.
Both deals were among the largest contracts issued this year by Space Systems Command, the Space Force’s acquisition arm.
I asked Sandra Erwin, SpaceNews’ national security reporter, about how to think of these awards. Here’s what she said:
“The biggest takeaway is that the Space Force is now reliant on SpaceX to build the foundation of entirely new military architectures: The communications layer (SDN), which moves data around the network; and the sensing layer (AMTI), which collects some of the data that will move across that network.
“That still does not mean SpaceX has won everything. The Space Force is going out of its way to say AMTI will be a multi-vendor architecture and that additional contracts are coming. But the initial awards suggest that SpaceX is setting the baseline architecture against which everyone else will compete.
“Also, these awards indicate that the Space Force is prioritizing speed over traditional acquisition diversification. The Space Force wants an operational capability by 2028. There are no other companies that can realistically field a large proliferated constellation on that timeline. The government may view this concentration risk as acceptable if it gets capability into orbit years faster. Even though the Pentagon frequently warns against single points of failure in the supply chain, in space, a substantial portion of future architecture is now tied to one company.”
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