{"id":543433,"date":"2026-04-21T20:17:14","date_gmt":"2026-04-21T20:17:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/543433\/"},"modified":"2026-04-21T20:17:14","modified_gmt":"2026-04-21T20:17:14","slug":"pentagon-pulls-the-plug-on-one-of-the-militarys-most-troubled-space-programs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/543433\/","title":{"rendered":"Pentagon pulls the plug on one of the military&#8217;s most troubled space programs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Pentagon has canceled a ground control system for the US military\u2019s GPS satellite navigation network after the program\u2019s enduring problems \u201cproved insurmountable,\u201d the\u00a0US Space Force <a href=\"https:\/\/www.spaceforce.mil\/News\/Article-Display\/Article\/4465024\/ussf-terminates-contract-for-the-global-positioning-system-next-generation-oper\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">announced in a press release<\/a> Monday.<\/p>\n<p>The Global Positioning System Next-Generation Operational Control System, known by the acronym OCX, was officially canceled by Michael Duffey, the Pentagon\u2019s defense acquisition executive, on Friday, April 17, the Space Force said.<\/p>\n<p>The decision to terminate the OCX program ends a 16-year, multibillion-dollar effort to design, test, and deliver a command and control system for the military\u2019s constellation of GPS navigation satellites. The program consisted of software to handle new signals from the latest generation of GPS satellites, GPS III, which started launching in 2018, along with two master control stations and modifications to ground monitoring stations around the world.<\/p>\n<p>The Pentagon awarded the OCX contract to Raytheon, now known as RTX Corporation, in 2010, with a timetable for completion in 2016 at a cost of $3.7 billion. Budget projections to finish the program grew to nearly $8 billion, nearly as much as the cost of an entire fleet of some 30 new GPS satellites.<\/p>\n<p>The schedule for OCX extended out a decade longer than anticipated. RTX finally delivered the control system to the Space Force last year, but further tests revealed it was still not ready for GPS operations. <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/space\/2026\/03\/after-16-years-and-8-billion-the-militarys-new-gps-software-still-doesnt-work\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ars reported<\/a> on the long-running issues with OCX last month.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe discovered problems\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRegrettably, extensive system issues arose during the integrated testing of OCX with the broader GPS enterprise,\u201d said Col. Stephen Hobbs, commander of the Space Force\u2019s Mission Delta 31, which operates the GPS constellation. \u201cDespite repeated collaborative approaches by the entire government and contractor team, the challenges of onboarding the system in an operationally relevant timeline proved insurmountable.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe discovered problems across a broad range of capability areas that would put current GPS military and civilian capabilities at risk,\u201d Hobbs said in a statement.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cRTX is aware of the US Government decision regarding the GPS OCX program,\u201d an RTX spokesperson said in a statement. \u201cRaytheon delivered the system in 2025 and has continued to support the US Space Force in post-delivery activities. We remain committed to supporting our customers and will work closely with the government on the next steps.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Pentagon has canceled a ground control system for the US military\u2019s GPS satellite navigation network after the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543434,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-543433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543433"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543433\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543434"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}