WASHINGTON — As the Space Force nears launch of the final satellite in the current GPS III configuration for its venerable Global Positioning System constellation, congressional budgetmeisters are pushing the service to speed up improvements and launch new satellites that can better withstand growing adversary jamming and spoofing threats.
After two days of weather-related delays, the ninth, and penultimate, GPS III bird launched Tuesday night at 11:53 pm EST on a SpaceX Falcon 9. GPS III SV09 was originally slated to go up on a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Vulcan rocket in December 2025, but due to delays in the rocket’s National Security Space Launch certification, the Space Force shifted the manifest to SpaceX in December 2024.
The final GPS III satellite is slated to launch in March, Col. Neil Barnas, commander of the Space Systems Command’s System Delta 831 responsible for developing GPS improvements, told reporters Friday.
The 31-satellite GPS constellation currently comprises eight GPS III satellites and 11 GPS IIF birds, while the remaining 12 are a mix of earlier model GPS IIR and IIR-M satellites, according to the US Coast Guard Navigation Center that tracks the health of the constellation. Once on station and operating in medium Earth orbit, GPS III SV09 will replace one of the older models, as will SV10 following its launch.
GPS prime contractor Lockheed Martin claims on its website that the GPS III models bring up to eight times the jam resistancy of the earlier variants.
Despite the steady progress in GPS updates, lawmakers on both sides of Capitol Hill fret that the current Defense Department and Space Force strategy for improving GPS and finding alternate systems to ensure the availability position, navigation and timing (PNT) signals for use by US military forces, and civilians, is not moving far enough fast enough.
Specifically, appropriators signaled dismay with Space Force moves in its fiscal 2026 budget request to put off scheduled procurement of more next-generation GPS IIIF satellites. The service’s request also terminated the Resilient-GPS (R-GPS) program to develop alternative space-based PNT capabilities that could back up and/or augment GPS signals when they are degraded or unavailable.
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The appropriators further chided the Defense Department for failing to take “significant actions to address the findings and recommendations” of a classified May 2024 study by the Defense Science Board completed in May 2024 that “highlights many, but not all, the issues that must be addressed to make PNT services more resilient, such as accelerating the delivery of jam resistant user equipment and increasing resilience of the ground control segment.”
Therefore, the compromise spending bill slated $30 million for DoD to develop “an integrated PNT architecture that maximizes enduring competition while using a Modular Open Mission Systems approach to maintain the Nation’s commitment to a resilient PNT capability for military and civilian users.”
Lawmakers also directed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to provide congressional overseers with “a comprehensive written plan of action and milestones for investments in more resilient capabilities across space, ground, and user equipment segments” within 90 days of the bill’s entry into force.
R-GPS A ‘Marginal’ Improvement At High Cost: Goward
As first reported by Aviation Week, the Space Force canceled the R-GPS program in its FY26 budget request, citing the need to put funding to higher Department of the Air Force priorities.
Nonetheless, Barnas said that the “Phase 0” R-GPS study will provide “lessened learned” for future jam-resistant PNT satellites
“We had three performers, all of them did exceptionally well, and they proved to us that we can take GPS capabilities, we can use lower costs more and put them into a more resilient architecture,” he said.
SSC launched the R-GPS in 2024, explaining in a press release that the program was aimed at providing “resilience to military and civil GPS user communities by augmenting the GPS constellation with proliferated small satellites transmitting a core set of widely-utilized GPS signals.”
The command tapped Astranis, Axient, L3 Harris, and Sierra Space for what the release called the first of three planned Lite Evolving Augmented Proliferation efforts that were to be pursued under the R-GPS program, with each firm to produce a design concept. The contracts, worth $10 million each, were funded under then-Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall’s “quick start” initiative designed to kick-start high priority programs.
In February 2025, the service terminated its contract with Axient, which was acquired by Asterion in September 2024.
Dana Goward, president of the Resilient Navigation and Timing Foundation, told Breaking Defense that a key challenge with the R-GPS program has been its high cost — about $1 billion over five years, according to an November 2024 article in Defense News.
At the same time, he said, “R-GPS would provide only a marginal improvement of capability over GPS” when what is instead needed is a “quantum capability leap.”
Congressional appropriators seem to agree. The draft FY26 bill provides $15 million to continue “the development of resilient GPS space systems.” Another $15 million is provided to fund a demonstration of commercial PNT services.
Speeding GPS IIIF Development
In the meantime Barnas said the Space Force is continuing to “press forward” on production of the GPS IIIF, noting that 12 satellites are now on contract with Lockheed.
Lockheed is scheduled to begin delivery of those new, improved satellites — the first of which will be labeled SV11 — in 2027.
A company spokesman told Breaking Defense in an email Tuesday that GPS IIIF will be able to broadcast the jam-resist M-Code signal, along with the “Regional Military Protection (RMP), a high power, encrypted signal that provides more than 60-times the anti-jamming capability of legacy GPS satellites.”
In addition, the spokesperson said, starting with SV13, all the GPS IIIF satellites “will use the new LM2100 Combat Bus, a cyber-hardened bus that strengthens GPS resiliency.”
However, congressional appropriators are not pleased that the Space Force put its planned FY26 procurement of additional GPS IIIF birds on hold.
“In 2018, the Space Force entered into a contract to develop and procure 22 GPS IIIF satellites. GPS IIIF provides important new capabilities … improved search and rescue capabilities, as well as improvements to the nuclear detection payload and various other technical upgrades,” the draft spending bill states.
Lawmakers note that contract “includes pre-priced production options to leverage economies of scale, significantly reducing unit costs when buying more than one spacecraft in a year.” Thus, the creation of a “gap year” in procurement of GPS IIIF is “triggering a costly penalty payment” to the detriment of taxpayers.
“The House and Senate Defense Appropriations Subcommittees do not seek to encourage such fiscally imprudent decisions in the future,” the draft bill chides, and thus the lawmakers have added funds for two GPS IIIF satellites — bumping up the Space Force procurement budget request of $110 million by $528 million to a total of $638 million.
Lastly, the lawmakers instruct Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink “to prioritize this program in the fiscal year 2027 President’s budget request and not use it to pay for other projects as the GPS mission is a core responsibility of the Space Force and essential to military operations as well as civil and commercial activity.”