An update on where we are with Resilient GPS, an additional network of smaller, cheaper navigation satellites that would augment existing GPS satellites.
The U.S. Space Force is concerned about the resiliency of the Global Positioning System (GPS) and has moved out on a plan to address it, although it’s unclear if the money will be there in the coming years to achieve all the service’s goals.
The service, created in 2019 during the first Trump Administration, is worried that existing GPS satellites are too prone to interference and jamming.
It has proposed Resilient GPS, or R-GPS, an additional network of smaller, cheaper navigation satellites to augment the existing network of 31 GPS satellites. This addition to the network is estimated to cost $1 billion over the next five years for up to 20 small satellites.
So far, some lawmakers in Congress have not been convinced that more GPS satellites are the answer.
In April 2024, the Secretary of the Air Force, the parent department of Space Force, received approval from the deputy secretary of Defense to immediately repurpose $40 million of fiscal year 2023 defense appropriations to start R-GPS, which previously had been known as GPS-Lite.
The Space Force moved fast with that money. Using the “quick start” authority provided under the National Defense Authorization Act, the Space Force R-GPS team conducted market research, hosted an industry day, released a solicitation and awarded initial contracts, all in less than six months, which it said is much faster than traditional space programs.
In the fall of 2024, Space Force awarded those initial contracts to Astranis, Axient, L3Harris and Sierra Space to produce design concepts for R-GPS. It also asked Congress for more, specifically the realignment of $77 million in the fiscal 2025 president’s budget request.
That’s where Space Force ran up against a recalcitrant Congress.
“It is not clear how these additional satellites increase the resilience against the primary jamming threat to GPS, compared to alternative concepts for position, navigation and timing systems being pursued elsewhere in the Department of Defense,” members of the House Appropriations Committee wrote in their report on the bill.
The committee also didn’t like that the proposed satellites would not include M-Code, a stronger, more secure GPS signal to meet military needs, which the committee said is “a critical link to enabling jam-resistant capabilities.”
The committee also didn’t seem to approve of what it considered an end-run around its authority. The funding reallocation could have been considered as part of the regular budget process, but “instead, the Department chose to bypass its own budget process and dodge the congressional appropriations process to exercise this new, extraordinary authority,” according to the report.
The committee did not include the requested $77 million alignment and told the director of cost assessment and program evaluation, in consultation with the chairman of the Joint Requirements Oversight Council, “to provide a report to the congressional defense committees not later than 180 days after enactment of this Act that includes an assessment of whether R–GPS is the best alternative to improve the resiliency of position, navigation and timing services to support national security.”
Elections Have Consequences
All that was so 2024. In winter 2025, the landscape completely changed. Just over a month into the second Trump Administration, that defense budget has not been approved—the bill passed the House but not the Senate—and likely will be subsumed into a new defense spending package. Meanwhile, the Pentagon is preparing for sizable annual budget cuts and a reorientation of priorities.
New Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said in a recent address that the Pentagon will pull 8%, or about $50 billion, from “nonlethal programs in the current budget” and refocus that on “America first” priorities.
“That’s not a cut; it’s refocusing and reinvesting existing funds into building the force that protects you, the American people,” Hegseth said in a message published on the Department of Defense’s website.
There are still many questions about those cuts and many others both underway and still pending for the federal government, under the auspices of Elon Musk and DOGE, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
Some agencies have felt the budget axe hard already, including USAID, but DOGE is likely to tread more lightly at the Pentagon, and Hegseth said there are some sacred cows in the Department of Defense that won’t be touched, or will even be strengthened.
Those include border protection, a major component of Trump’s rapid-paced move to revamp the government; fighting transnational criminal organizations smuggling fentanyl and other substances into the U.S.; nuclear modernization; submarine programs; missile defense; drone technology; cybersecurity; core readiness and training; and the defense industrial base, among others.
Beyond that, little is known so far, and less about how the financial refocusing—and accompanying personnel cuts—will affect individual programs.
Soldiering On
For its part, Space Force is continuing its plans under the original $40 million repurposed money.
“Space Force is engaging with Congress and stakeholders to address any concerns” such as those expressed in the House Appropriations Committee report, an agency spokesperson said in response to questions from Inside GNSS.
The four-contract award, known as Phase 0 of the program, is expected to wrap up in April and will include initial payload prototype demonstrations. Follow-on contracts will be considered after the initial designs have been evaluated.
Space Force still wants to launch up to eight small satellites by 2028, although to go beyond that point it will need more money, saying, “further work on R-GPS is funding dependent beyond Phase 0.”
The budget goal for R-GPS space vehicles is $50 to $80 million per satellite, much cheaper than the $250 million or so for full-size GPS III satellites, but still a sizable chunk of change for the hoped-for 20 satellites.
Space Force’s Four Small Sat Makers
The four companies chosen by Space Force to create small, resilient GPS satellites are a mix of established defense contractors and newer, outside-the-box companies.
L3Harris and Sierra Space would represent the former, while Astranis and Axient represent the latter. Some of the contenders have discussed their efforts for the new work, although not in any specific detail.
Sierra Space, a 30-year veteran of commercial space activities, announced in mid-January its entry for R-GPS had successfully completed a systems requirements review, which a company official said shows the company is able to work fast.
“We are focused on efficiency and speed of development to outpace adversaries,” said Erik Daehler, vice president of Defense, Satellites & Spacecraft Systems at Sierra Space. “The quick turnaround of two months from R-GPS program launch to this next step of development is exactly the speed at which commercial space companies should be moving.”
For its part, major defense contractor L3Harris said it’s “the only company to provide navigation technology for every U.S. GPS satellite ever launched, in addition to designing and building critical elements of the control segment, monitor station receivers and user equipment. This mature technology provides the foundation of the L3Harris R-GPS solution.”
The company is also working as the prime contractor on the Navigation Technology Satellite-3 program, aimed at demonstrating new PNT technologies.
San Francisco-based Astranis, founded in 2015, is a relative newcomer. It specializes in geostationary communications satellites—specifically what it calls small, powerful satellites for high orbits with the latest in digital processing technology. The R-GPS work would move it beyond its previous focus on internet communications into the PNT world.
The company’s entry for R-GPS is its new Nexus platform, a high-orbit, highly maneuverable platform.
“Nexus leverages Astranis’ experience building small satellites for high orbits and applies it to a new mission critical to both national security and the economy: making America’s GPS constellations more resilient to jamming, spoofing and kinetic attack,” according to the company.
It’s also worth noting that as a satellite internet provider, Astranis is a competitor with Starlink, owned by Elon Musk, so it remains to be seen if that dynamic will come into play.
Huntsville, Alabama-based Axient, formed by the company QuantiTech’s acquisition of several other companies, has a broad portfolio including a testbed for cubesats and small satellites. In the late fall of 2024, the company was acquired by Washington, D.C.-based Astrion, itself the product of a merger between two government services firms.
“The R-GPS satellites will provide the U.S. military with additional sources of positioning, navigation and timing data—an essential asset for both military and civilian operations,” according to an Astrion press release announcing the acquisition of Axient. “The DOD has identified the program as a high-priority initiative requiring immediate advancement.”
