COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—Boeing and its subsidiary Millennium Space Systems are rolling out a new mid-class satellite bus they say will provide commercial and defense customers flexibility at a time when the Pentagon is pushing for more production and speed.
The platform, called Resolute, fills a gap in the company’s current satellite portfolio, which includes Millennium’s small satellites and the larger buses Boeing has historically built. Resolute provides a mid-sized option that uses existing components from other internal products, which executives said is key to agile, reliable production.
“It’s new, but it’s a combination of existing capability,” Kay Sears, Boeing’s vice president and general manager for space, intelligence, and weapon systems, told reporters April 15. “And the reason that that’s important is, when you’re launching a new product and you have non-recurring engineering, that equals delays and risk. We’re avoiding that because we have invested in the commonality.”
Millennium CEO Tony Gingiss said the platform is in what the Space Force would call its preliminary design review phase and will be bid-ready this year.
“We are looking at the bids for Resolute this year,” he said. “We are looking for the right launch customer. …. We already know a few customers who are interested in that kind of size, weight, and power.”
Boeing and Millennium unveiled Resolute on the sidelines of the Space Symposium here, where Defense Department leaders stressed the need for more flexible, agile production lines that can scale quickly to meet demand and for spacecraft that have the power and thrust to maneuver in orbit.
Speaking April 15, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said that while the government has room to improve as a customer, the service needs industry to be ready to ramp up deliveries, and to do so on schedule. The Space Force’s $71 billion budget request, a 77 percent increase over last year, includes $19 billion for procurement—up from just $3.6 billion in fiscal ’26.
“We’ve not seen the production performance that we need to see,” Meink said. “There’s been a big focus, both in the government and particularly in the Department of War as well as in the industry, to improve that. We are seeing improvement across the board, but that has to increase.”
Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, head of Space Systems Command, told reporters April 13 that the service plans to use that increase to award new contracts and fund major increases to existing production contracts.
“If a company is nominally making 10, we want you to be prepared to make 40,” Garrant said. “We want industry to make the investments in capitalization and facilitization, and in return you’re going to get these large production contracts.”
While Boeing’s heritage is in building larger, more exquisite satellites for programs like GPS, Wideband Global Satellite Communications, and the in-development Evolved Strategic SATCOM effort, its acquisition of Millennium Space Systems in 2018 has positioned it as a player in the service’s shift to a more proliferated architecture made up of smaller, cheaper satellites.
The company in recent years has been investing in additional manufacturing capacity, and in February it announced it has opened a new, 9,000-square foot production line dedicated to building electro-optical infrared sensors for the Space Force and other customers. Boeing and Millennium plan to leverage that line, located within Boeing’s El Segundo, Calif., factory, to deliver 26 spacecraft this year—more than twice its 2025 rate.
Sears said Boeing’s track record of delivering important national security payloads combined with Millennium’s startup-like agility give the company an advantage in today’s defense landscape.
“I think that’s the differentiator,” Sears said. “We have a startup mentality with Millennium, but with the resources and heritage of a prime—and we don’t have to make a choice there. We don’t have to make a choice between heritage and agility. We actually can combine them.”