The contract option expires today. Sixteen years after the Pentagon awarded RTX — then called Raytheon — a contract to modernize the ground control system for its GPS satellites, the Space Force is weighing whether to pull the plug entirely.

The Next-Generation Operational Control System, known as OCX, was supposed to cost $3.7 billion and be finished by 2016. It has cost more than twice that. It still doesn’t work.

OCX is the software and hardware backbone for commanding the military’s constellation of more than 30 GPS satellites. RTX won the contract in 2010, initially valued at about $1.5 billion with delivery expected by 2018. According to the Government Accountability Office, costs have since ballooned to at least $6 billion, with an additional $400 million-plus for next-generation satellite support pushing the total toward $8 billion.

Delivered, but Broken

The Space Force formally accepted OCX from RTX in July 2025, briefly raising hopes that one of the military’s most troubled space programs had turned a corner. It hadn’t.

What RTX delivered, known as Block 0, supports GPS III satellite launches and early orbit checkout — but cannot operate the satellites. The critical Blocks 1 and 2, containing full command-and-control capabilities and enhanced cyber protections, remain mired in testing. Thomas Ainsworth, the Space Force’s acting acquisition executive, described the results to Congress as “extensive system issues across all sub-systems, many of which have not been resolved.”

The transition to government-led testing last year exposed “a broader set of deficiencies than previously identified,” Ainsworth said in prepared testimony on March 25. A Space Force spokesperson confirmed the defects will require “substantially more time than planned to resolve” and that the issues are “in part a continuation of challenges the program has repeatedly been experiencing.”

The same bugs that have haunted OCX for years are still there.

Ainsworth spread the blame evenly. “There’s been problems in program management, problems with the contractor performance, problems in system engineering, both on the government and on the contractor side, over a number of years,” he told lawmakers. His summary: “It’s a very stressing program. We are still considering how to move forward.”

The Stopgap That Became the Lifeline

With OCX foundering, the military is falling back on the system OCX was supposed to replace. The Architecture Evolution Plan, or AEP, is the legacy ground system that Lockheed Martin has incrementally upgraded since 2016 — originally as a stopgap. That stopgap has become the primary path forward.

The Space Force is now evaluating whether to “harvest” usable OCX components and fold them into AEP, rather than continue full-scale development. A spokesperson confirmed that if OCX is canceled, “this will not impact users, as AEP is currently in operational use and provides command and control for the entire GPS constellation.”

The Pentagon’s independent test office has warned that OCX delays are stalling deployment of M-Code, the jam-resistant military GPS signal that has yet to reach operational use. “Continued delays to OCX put US warfighters and allies at risk,” the office said in its annual report.

A Procurement Pattern

OCX triggered a Nunn-McCurdy breach in 2016 — a statutory threshold for cost overruns so severe that Congress must be notified. The program survived. The overruns did not stop.

Air Force Secretary Troy Meink summed up the situation at a March 17 conference: “Like, 15 years ago, OCX was having challenges. And it continues to do so.”

The GAO is preparing an updated assessment. “This has clearly been a beleaguered program,” said Jon Ludwigson, a GAO director overseeing defense acquisitions. “I think folks would have very much liked it to have been completed and called a win.”

RTX maintains that it delivered. “The US Space Force accepted delivery of a mission-capable system in 2025 and assumed operational control at that time,” a company spokesperson said. “RTX is working alongside the government to address any post-delivery concerns.”

The Space Force has submitted its analysis to Pentagon acquisition chief Michael Duffey, who has authority to decide OCX’s fate. If he cancels the program, AEP will need further upgrades to support GPS IIIF satellites — the first of 22 is scheduled for delivery next year — and the L5 civilian signal GPS III was designed to broadcast.

Further OCX upgrades required for GPS IIIF support are not expected until fiscal 2027 at the earliest, with operational acceptance slipping to 2028. A Pentagon test report warned that “schedule slips to OCX correspondingly affect operational acceptance of OCX 3F and reduce any remaining margin in the OCX 3F delivery schedule.”

Four presidential administrations have now overseen this effort. The institution responsible for the world’s navigation coordinates could not navigate its own software upgrade.

The problem was never the satellites.

Sources