By Rajwa Quasim
SpaceX has secured a deal worth $1.6 billion from U.S. Space Force to launch a new generation of U.S. military satellites designed to improve Pentagon’s ability to detect, track and respond to airborne threats.
The deal contains 18 missions across two task orders and will launch from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California using SpaceX’s reusable Falcon 9 rockets. It is expected to be completed by the end of 2027. The mission comes under the National Security Space Launch (NSSL) Phase 3 Lane 1 program.
The contract was awarded as part of the Space Development Agency’s (SDA) efforts to build Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA). It is a network of hundreds of low Earth orbit satellites intended to provide global missile warning, missile tracking, and secure military communications.
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This deal marks the largest publicly announced batch of mission under the NSSL Phase 3 program, U.S. Space Force’s commercial – style procurement program that allows approved launch companies to compete for lower-risk national security missions without going through the military’s toughest certification for each launch.
The satellite themselves fall under the Space Force’s Space-Based Sensing and Targeting (SBST) program, a constellation meant to complete the Air Force’s existing E-7 Wedgetail early warning aircraft by tracking fast moving aerial threats, including hypersonic weapons and cruise missiles.
Eric Zarybnisky, a Space Force acquisition official, described it as an “unprecedented two-month acquisition timeline,” according to a Space Force news release, cited by MarketScreener. The faster process is seen as an important step for the military, which has spent years trying to speed up how it buys satellites and launch services from private companies.
SpaceX has now secured at least $7 billion Pentagon contracts so far in 2026. That includes a $4.6 billion deal for the airborne moving target indicator system and $2.29 billion for a related communications satellite system that will quickly send data between missile-warning sensors and missile interceptors. Much of this is related to Pentagon’s Golden Dome missile defense project in which SpaceX plays a prominent role. The expected total cost of this project is $185 billion.
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The Phase 3 of NSSL took effect in 2025. It is split into two lanes, where Lane 1 covers missions to more permissive orbits — typically low Earth orbit constellations — and is designed to be more competitive, faster to award, and open to newer entrants. Though seven companies hold positions on the Lane 1 contract vehicle currently, as of now SpaceX remains as the only company with the combination of launch frequency, operational Falcon 9 and West Coast infrastructure needed to support a campaign of this scale. Meanwhile, lane 2 handles the heaviest and most demanding national security missions with stricter certification requirements.
While Space Force’s launch program technically keeps competitors like United Launch Alliance (ULA) and Jeff Bezo’s Blue Origin eligible to bid for missions, SpaceX continues to dominate the awards. This has drawn several criticisms from some lawmakers as they argue that the Pentagon may be leaning too heavily on a single contractor for critical national security infrastructure.
ULA is investigating a problem with the booster separation system on its Vulcan rocket. Although, the rocket has been certified to launch Pentagon satellites, the investigation time has raised questions about future mission schedule. Meanwhile, Blue Origin is investigating it’s Glenn rocket which blew up on the launch pad ahead of its planned flight.