Pentagon Awards More Space-Based Airborne Target Tracking Contracts

The U.S. Space Force has awarded $615 million across three further contracts to work on Space-Base Airborne Moving Target Indicator (AMTI) capabilities.

The awards have gone to Rocket Lab, Systems and Technologies Research (STR), and another business the service would not identify citing operational security reasons. The new effort aims to diversify the supplier base and use of different sensing technologies, the service said Aug. 4.

The service in May awarded SpaceX a $4.16 billion contract to stand up an initial space-based air moving target indication constellation by 2028.

“The core focus of this second task order is diversifying our capabilities and ensuring we don’t rely on a single technical solution,” said Space Force Col. Ryan Frazier, acting Space Force Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Space-Based Sensing and Tracking. The new vendors open “unique innovations and technologies and fundamentally different ways to accomplish the airborne moving target indication mission,” he said.

The contracts were awarded within a pool of vendors that qualified earlier in an indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contracting arrangements. Rocket Lab and STR are among eight companies selected in the vendor pool for space-based airborne moving target indicator capabilities. The others included L3Harris Technologies, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Visto 360 AI, Wildstar and York Space Systems, Aviation Week previously reported.

The Department of the Air Force is moving quickly to field a new AMTI satellite network after seeing promise over the last year with on-orbit prototype systems, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink told reporters in April at the Space Foundation’s annual Space Symposium in Colorado Springs.