The Space Force awarded a major deal July 27 as part of its competition to develop the core mission planning software that will manage its future fleet of nuclear command and control satellites.
Space Systems Command announced a $287 million award to Sphinx Defense to develop a mission planning prototype for the Evolved Strategic Satellite Communications program’s ground segment. The application will help the service manage the network, apportion bandwidth among users, and provide the President and other national leaders with resilient, secure communications.
“This award delivers the vital mission planning capability for ESS, ensuring the ground segment is fully prepared to manage complex global scenarios,” SSC said in a statement. “By leveraging competitive prototyping during the earlier phases, Space Systems Command is fielding an application that is both highly capable and ready to integrate seamlessly into the larger enterprise.”
ESS will eventually take over the nuclear mission that’s performed today by the Space Force’s Advanced Extremely High Frequency satellite constellation. The program is an important component of the Pentagon’s broader work to modernize the nuclear enterprise.
The ESS ground segment, dubbed the Ground Resilient Integration Framework for Operational NC3 or GRIFFON, will manage the strategic communication satellites and the capability they provide once they’re on orbit. The Space Force is aiming to field GRIFFON much faster than it has historically delivered ground segments, which traditionally lag behind satellite development, often leaving untapped capability on orbit. The goal is to cut the traditional timeline in half—from 12 years to six.
To do that, the service is utilizing a number of flexible acquisition tools, including the Pentagon’s software acquisition pathway—which allows the military services to buy software more rapidly—and a novel competitive prototyping approach, which has companies building competing ground segment prototypes across four segments:
- Framework, which is focused on establishing a modular, open architecture that can host multiple mission applications and services
- Ground integration, which includes the internal and external ground interfaces like command and control terminals and space ground links
- System of systems integration, which integrates the space and ground cryptographic terminals
- Mission applications, which ranges from testing and training support to command and control and mission planning
“The competitive prototypes that ESS utilized to acquire and develop the software showcased an approach not previously used for DOD software acquisition on this scale,” SSC said in a March 2025 article. “As a result ESS was able to drastically shorten fielding timelines and system costs. Conservative estimates show that ESS ground software will deliver user-driven capability twice as fast as an average traditional ground system.”
That iterative development strategy means that this latest mission application award builds on previous phases of competitive prototypes, according to SSC.
Charlotte Gerhart, deputy portfolio acquisition executive for satellite communications and positioning, navigation, and timing, told Air & Space Forces Magazine in a recent interview that the broader GRIFFON acquisition effort is progressing well and is on schedule to be ready to support the first ESS satellites once they’re ready to launch.
“They are absolutely making really great progress,” Gerhart said. “You’ve got to have a ground system. Otherwise, there’s no point in launching something.”
The first two spacecraft, which are being built by Boeing under a $2.8 billion contract, are expected to be delivered by 2031. That contract, issued in 2025, includes an option to buy two more spacecraft.
The Space Force’s fiscal 2027 budget request includes $1.8 billion for ESS—more than $1.2 billion for satellite development and around $571 million for GRIFFON. Between fiscal ‘28 and fiscal ‘31, the service expects to need about $4.8 billion to fund the effort.