SATELLITE 2026 \u2014 The Space Force has awarded Kratos Technology and Training Solutions a new award worth up to $446.8 million to build the ground system for the service\u2019s medium Earth orbit (MEO) constellation to track ballistic and hypersonic cruise missiles.<\/p>\n
Kratos Technology and Training Solutions will support launch of the first two iterations of the Space Force\u2019s Resilient Missile Warning Tracking (MWT) architecture in MEO, called Epoch 1 and 2, under the Ground Management and Integration (GMI) Other Transaction Authority agreement, which was formalized March 17. Kratos will manage their operations at a corresponding ground-based Space Operations Center, according to a Space Systems Command (SSC) announcement<\/a>.<\/p>\n The award to Kratos is a follow-on to an original $55 million task order awarded to Parsons Corporation in April 2023 \u201cto develop hardware and software solutions\u201d and \u201coutfit\u201d the Space Operations Center to \u201cenable an Epoch 1 initial launch capability,\u201d an SSC spokesperson told Breaking Defense in an email.<\/p>\n \u201cThe recent Ground Management and Integration contract award builds upon the original contract to support Epoch 1, Epoch 2, and future Epoch launches and operations for MEO space vehicles (SV) currently on contract in development and production, as well as future SVs to create a resilient MWT architecture,\u201d the spokesperson added.<\/p>\n The Space Force now is planning a\u00a0\u201cbaseline\u201d constellation<\/a>\u00a0of about 30 Resilient MWT MEO satellites. MEO lies between the upper edge of low Earth orbit at 2,000 kilometers (1,242.7 miles) above the Earth and geosynchronous orbit at 35,786 kilometers (22,236.4 miles). The program is one of three separate missile warning\/tracking efforts being managed by the service, all of which are supporting the Trump administration\u2019s ambitious Golden Dome<\/a> initiative.<\/p>\n The service awarded contracts to Raytheon Intelligence & Space and Boeing\u2019s Millennium Space Systems in January 2023 <\/a>to build Epoch 1 prototypes.\u00a0In June 2023<\/a>, SSC awarded a $29 million Epoch 1 sensor payload design contract to L3Harris Technologies. However, in June 2024<\/a> SSC booted Raytheon from the program citing technical failures and cost\/schedule growth, and in October<\/a> 2024 awarded $386 million to Millennium Space Systems for an additional six satellites to make up the total of 12 Epoch 1 birds.<\/p>\n In June 2025, SSC awarded BAE Systems $1.2 billion to build 10 satellites for the second-generation Epoch 2 birds. <\/p>\n The first set of nine Epoch 1 satellites are scheduled to launch early in calendar year 2027. The service expects a second set of Epoch 1 satellites to be delivered in fiscal 2028, and the first of the Epoch 2 satellites in FY29.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SATELLITE 2026 \u2014 The Space Force has awarded Kratos Technology and Training Solutions a new award worth up…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":543779,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[37607,175374,192730,242319,79,193,11716,14931],"class_list":["post-543778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-missile-defense","tag-missile-tracking","tag-resilient-missile-warning-missile-tracking","tag-satellite-conference-2026","tag-science","tag-space","tag-space-force","tag-space-systems-command"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543778","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=543778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/543778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/543779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=543778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=543778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=543778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}