Space Force scrambling to get GPS ground system upgrades done by 2025

WASHINGTON — The Space Force is pushing hard to wrap up its long lagging programs to upgrade the ground systems and receivers for Global Position System (GPS) satellites — including ditching the Air Force B-2 bomber as a first test platform for airborne receivers capable of using the jam-resistant M-Code signal in order to speed them to cross-service aircraft operators, according to a senior service acquisition official.

“Current programs that are scheduled to complete in 2025? … There is a gun to our head to finish in 2025,” Cordell DeLaPena, program executive officer for Military Communications & Positioning, Navigation, and Timing  at Space Systems Command (SSC), said on Thursday.

Speaking at SSC’s annual Space Industry Days conference in Los Angeles, he said that progress is being made on the troubled ground system for command and control of the most modern GPS satellites, the Next-Generation Operational Control System (OCX). Being developed by RTX (formerly Raytheon), OCX is needed to allow some 700 weapon systems across the US military to fully access the encrypted M-Code signal. However, the program has been a poster child for broken acquisition, having been originally planned to begin operations more than a decade ago.

OCX “is almost done with the lab development. Operator testing starts next month. There’s one final acquisition program baseline, APB, milestone left on that program. It’s called ‘ready to transition operations.’ Think of that as readiness to enter operational test. That’s the last milestone, and we’re going to hit it before the end of the year,” DeLaPena pledged.

The Space Force also has shaken up its multifaceted effort to field the M-Code user kit being developed under the Military GPS User Equipment (MGUE) program, he said.

That program also has been one of the banes of the GPS program for more than two decades — as reported ad nauseam by the Government Accountability Office and the Pentagon’s Office of Test & Evaluation. Under that program, the Space Force is in charge of developing the microchips and microelectronics cards that interface with the M-Code signals, although each individual service is responsible for building service-specific receivers/radios that use those components.

MGUE has two phases. MGUE Increment 1 is developing the baseline military-unique ASIC chips and cards for initial integration with platforms across the services, including Army Strykers land vehicles, Marine Corps Joint Light Tactical Vehicles (JLTVs), and the Navy’s DDG-class destroyers — as well as, until recently, the Air Force’s B-2 bomber. MGUE Increment 2 will deliver a smaller, more powerful ASIC chip for use by handheld radios and precision-guided munitions.

“Military GPS User Equipment Increment 1? … We’ve got to finish that program,” DeLaPena said.

“We’ve completed the certification for the terrestrial domain. The Army is buying it big time for their users, for their for their Strykers. The Marine Corps for their JLTVs. In September, I certified the maritime platform, which is the Navy destroyer, the DDG,” he added.

“The final APB milestone on MGUE Increment 1 is certification for the aviation platform. We did something very interesting over the past two weeks,” DeLaPena explained. After it became clear that the Air Force “could not make a B-2 available for this program,” SSC made a proposal to the Department of the Air Force’s space acquisition czar, Frank Calvelli, that an Army aircraft — a Gray Eagle unmanned aerial vehicle — be used as a test vehicle instead.

(A September GAO report found that the Air Force’s internal effort to develop the radios for the M-Code chips has fallen significantly behind schedule.)

After coordinating on the proposal with the Defense Department Office of the Director of Test & Evaluation, the Army, and the Office of the Secretary of Defense, Calvelli signed off on that change in lead test aircraft on Thursday, DeLaPena said.

“We are pressing ahead with MGUE Increment 1, and we’re going to meet that final milestone in 2025,” he vowed.