The Pentagon has canceled a ground control system for the US military’s GPS satellite navigation network after the program’s enduring problems “proved insurmountable,” the US Space Force announced in a press release Monday.
The Global Positioning System Next-Generation Operational Control System, known by the acronym OCX, was officially canceled by Michael Duffey, the Pentagon’s defense acquisition executive, on Friday, April 17, the Space Force said.
The decision to terminate the OCX program ends a 16-year, multibillion-dollar effort to design, test, and deliver a command and control system for the military’s constellation of GPS navigation satellites. The program consisted of software to handle new signals from the latest generation of GPS satellites, GPS III, which started launching in 2018, along with two master control stations and modifications to ground monitoring stations around the world.
The Pentagon awarded the OCX contract to Raytheon, now known as RTX Corporation, in 2010, with a timetable for completion in 2016 at a cost of $3.7 billion. Budget projections to finish the program grew to nearly $8 billion, nearly as much as the cost of an entire fleet of some 30 new GPS satellites.
The schedule for OCX extended out a decade longer than anticipated. RTX finally delivered the control system to the Space Force last year, but further tests revealed it was still not ready for GPS operations. Ars reported on the long-running issues with OCX last month.
“We discovered problems”
“Regrettably, extensive system issues arose during the integrated testing of OCX with the broader GPS enterprise,” said Col. Stephen Hobbs, commander of the Space Force’s Mission Delta 31, which operates the GPS constellation. “Despite repeated collaborative approaches by the entire government and contractor team, the challenges of onboarding the system in an operationally relevant timeline proved insurmountable.
“We discovered problems across a broad range of capability areas that would put current GPS military and civilian capabilities at risk,” Hobbs said in a statement.
“RTX is aware of the US Government decision regarding the GPS OCX program,” an RTX spokesperson said in a statement. “Raytheon delivered the system in 2025 and has continued to support the US Space Force in post-delivery activities. We remain committed to supporting our customers and will work closely with the government on the next steps.”
Instead of moving forward with OCX, the Space Force will continue retooling the GPS network’s decades-old legacy control system. Some of these improvements on the old system have already been implemented through an “Architecture Evolution Plan,” allowing the Space Force to begin taking advantage of GPS satellite upgrades that originally required OCX. The GPS satellite upgrades include new military-grade “M-code” signals more resilient to jamming, spoofing, and other threats now routinely encountered in warfare.
Now, instead of using OCX to unlock the latest GPS upgrades like M-code, the Space Force said it has “confidence that further upgrades to GPS ground systems” will continue to “deliver new capabilities.”
“Ultimately, we analyzed the work remaining on OCX and compared this with the current GPS control system capability,” Hobbs said. “The analysis revealed additional investment in OCX was no longer the best solution for protecting and advancing GPS capabilities. Instead, we will continue enhancing the current control system to operate the GPS satellite constellation.”
A harbinger of OCX’s cancellation was the Space Force’s award of a $105 million contract to Lockheed Martin earlier this month. The contract covers ground system upgrades to support initial operations of the military’s next-generation GPS IIIF satellites, due to begin launching next year. The last of the Space Force’s GPS III-series navigation satellites is scheduled for launch this week. Lockheed Martin manufactures the GPS III and IIIF satellites.
According to the Space Force, as of January, the government had spent approximately $6.27 billion on the OCX program. This number includes direct funding to Raytheon and other expenses, such as the cost of government testing and administrative costs.
The experience with OCX runs counter to the Space Force’s recent emphasis on faster deliveries and commercial partnerships. “It’s important we refine and update acquisition processes to prioritize rapid, incremental capability delivery versus complex ‘all or nothing’ system deliveries,” said Tom Ainsworth, assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration.
The Pentagon nearly canceled OCX after its development exceeded cost and schedule targets in 2016, but officials decided to proceed with OCX after restructuring the program. At the time, the Government Accountability Office blamed the OCX woes on “poor acquisition decisions” and a “persistently high software development defect rate.”
