{"id":46937,"date":"2026-05-29T18:22:08","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T10:22:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/spacex-gets-nearly-4-2-billion-nod-from-space-force-for-initial-sb-amti\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T18:22:08","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T10:22:08","slug":"spacex-gets-nearly-4-2-billion-nod-from-space-force-for-initial-sb-amti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/spacex-gets-nearly-4-2-billion-nod-from-space-force-for-initial-sb-amti\/","title":{"rendered":"SpaceX Gets Nearly $4.2 Billion Nod From Space Force For Initial SB-AMTI"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Two days after the <strong>U.S. Space Force Space Systems Command<\/strong> (SSC) awarded <strong>SpaceX<\/strong> a nearly $2.3 billion contract for the Space Data Network Backbone, a proliferated Low Earth Orbit communications network, SSC on Friday awarded the company a nearly $4.2 billion Other Transaction Authority (OTA) contract for initial fielding of the Space-Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator (SB-AMTI) system.<\/p>\n<p>SpaceX plans to go public on June 12 on the Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX.<\/p>\n<p>Last month, Space Force said that it had awarded&nbsp;nine firms small contracts for SB-AMTI development and Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said that the service would soon make an award for the first SB-AMTI operational increment. Those nine firms include SpaceX, but SSC has not disclosed the others.<\/p>\n<p>Since the Trump administration entered office last year, the Air Force has tried to cancel the planned buy of the Boeing E-7 Wedgetail airborne warning and control aircraft in favor of SB-AMTI, but Congress nixed that cancellation, and the Air Force now says it is funding seven Wedgetails at a cost of $4.9 billion \u2014 about $700 million per aircraft. Wedgetail would replace the 1970s-era Boeing E-3 aircraft.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe long-standing method of military airborne platforms to track moving targets faces continued challenges as adversaries develop increasingly sophisticated anti-access\/area-denial systems,\u201d SSC said on May 29. \u201cTo compliment traditional airborne sensing, the requirement for a layered, highly resilient tracking architecture is evident.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Space Force Col. Ryan Frazier, the service\u2019s acting portfolio acquisition executive for space based sensing and tracking, said in a statement that SSC is \u201cbeginning development and integration efforts immediately to meet the program\u2019s rapid deployment milestones and address emerging national security requirements.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>In addition to the OTA to SpaceX for the initial SB-AMTI fielding, SSC said that multiple awards are expected \u201cto drive a vendor-diverse expansion, enhancing capacity and capability for combatant commanders.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis initial award is projected to field a constellation of satellites by 2028, providing the Joint Force with an early capability to eliminate operational blind spots,\u201d according to the command.<\/p>\n<p><em>This story was first published by Defense Daily<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Two days after the U.S. Space Force Space Systems Command (SSC) awarded SpaceX a nearly $2.3 billion contract for the Space Data Network Backbone, a proliferated Low Earth Orbit communications network, SSC on Friday awarded the company a nearly $4.2 billion Other Transaction Authority (OTA) contract for initial fielding of the Space-Based Airborne Moving Target [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46937"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46937"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46937\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}