Washington: The US Space Force has awarded BAE Systems $1.2 billion to build 10 satellites for its new missile warning constellation to track hypersonic cruise missiles as well as ballistic missiles.
The satellites will be a second generation, called Epoch 2, of the service’s planned Resilient Missile Warning and Tracking (MWT) Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) program, and when fielded alongside the first generation will “posture the USSF to deliver the initial warfighting capabilities,” the Space Force press release said. They will be produced by BAE Systems Space and Mission Systems business unit, formerly Ball Aerospace, which was acquired by BAE in 2024.
The Space Force now is planning a “baseline” constellation of about 30 Resilient MWT MEO satellites. The service in its original fiscal 2025 budget request, released last March, asked for almost $6 billion for the program through FY29. Following in the footsteps of SDA, Space Systems Command is developing the new MEO constellation incrementally, with a new, improved satellite configuration rolling out every two years under Other Transaction Authority firm-fixed price contracts.
SSC awarded Raytheon Intelligence & Space (now RTX) and Boeing’s Millennium Space Systems in January 2023 to build six MEO MWT Epoch 1 prototypes to orbit in two different MEO planes. RTX was subsequently booted from the program in June 2024 due to cost overruns and performance problems with its design. SSC chose Millennium to replace RTX in October 2024, boosting the total number of satellites to 12 because of design differences.
The delivery of the first Epoch 1 bird is planned for the end of FY26, and the second plane is expected in early FY28. The first of the Epoch 2 satellites are expected to begin delivery in FY29.
Col Rob Davis, head of SSC’s Space Sensing program office, in April said that the Space Force intended to grant two awards for a total of 18 Epoch 2 satellites.
