COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo.—The Space Force has selected an initial pool of vendors that will compete to build sensors and satellites that track airborne targets, as Pentagon officials push to transform the capability from a prototyping effort to an operational one.
During an April 15 speech here at the Space Symposium, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said the service recently issued a baseline indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity contract for space-based air moving target indication to multiple providers. He told reporters later the service plans to award its first operational contract “fairly shortly.”
The Space Force has been working with the National Reconnaissance Office to develop and fly space-based AMTI prototypes, to see if they can perform a mission from orbit that has traditionally been conducted by aircraft. Pentagon officials have given the idea of a vote of confidence, as they revealed plans in the 2026 budget to cancel the Air Force’s E-7 Wedgetail program, meant to procure a new early warning aircraft that can perform AMTI, and devoted $2 billion of the reconciliation funding it received to space-based AMTI.
Some analysts, however, have questioned the maturity of the space-based capability. In response, Meink has asserted on several occasions that the prototypes have demonstrated the viability of space-based AMTI. In a roundtable with reporters at the symposium, Meink pointed to decades of work within the U.S. military to demonstrate that AMTI could be performed from space. He said the question today is less about the technology and more about figuring out how to deliver the capability affordably.
“We have on-orbit data that says the technology and the physics work,” Meink said, adding later, “It’s just, how do we build it affordably, get it onto orbit, [and] make sure we have competition going forward … to keep that affordability long term.
The service’s fiscal 2027 budget proposes $7 billion to turbocharge the space-based AMTI effort. In a separate briefing with reporters, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said the large procurement investment would help the service “achieve that economy of scale with industry.”
Meanwhile, the fiscal ’27 budget once again does not include funding for the Wedgetail, once meant to replace the Air Force’s aging E-3 Sentry fleet, despite the fact that Congress forbade the service from canceling the prototyping program in fiscal 2026 and provided $1.1 billion in funding to advance the effort.
The Air Force is complying with lawmakers’ direction to use the fiscal ’26 funding to buy E-7 prototypes, and Meink said this week the service is finalizing decisions about how to proceed with the program.
“The capability the E-7 will provide is an important capability, and so we need to be looking forward,” he said. “We’re finalizing those decisions with the Pentagon about how we want to do that, and we’ll roll that out to the Hill when it’s appropriate.”
Asked about how the service intends to fill near-term airborne battle management gaps following the late March loss of an E-3 during an Iranian attack on Prince Sultan Air Base in Saudi Arabia, Meink said the attack underscores the importance of fielding platforms that can withstand enemy fire.
“One of the things is that some of those losses highlight the importance of a survivable platform,” he said. “It is critically important to make sure … survivability is top of the list.”