Business · Ars Technica
Pentagon pulls the plug on one of the military's most troubled space programs
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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 Monday.
Key facts
- 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
- A harbinger of OCX’s cancellation was the Space Force’s award of a $105 million contract to Lockheed Martin earlier this month
- Stephen Hobbs, commander of the Space Force’s Mission Delta 31, which operates the GPS constellation
- According to the Space Force, as of January, the government had spent approximately $6.27 billion on the OCX program
Summary
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 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. The schedule for OCX extended out a decade longer than anticipated.