SpaceX has been awarded a $4.16bn contract by the acting United States Space Force (USSF) Portfolio Acquisition Executive (PAE) for Space Based Sensing & Targeting (SBST) to advance the Space-Based Airborne Moving Target Indicator (SB-AMTI) programme.
The agreement, made through a competitive Other Transaction Authority (OTA), is intended to expedite the delivery of a new sensing layer that will detect and track airborne threats worldwide, according to a statement from Space Systems Command (SSC) on 29 May 2026.
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The SB-AMTI is being developed in response to challenges facing traditional military airborne platforms, which have become vulnerable to advanced anti-access/area-denial (A2/AD) systems developed by adversaries.
The Space Force intends for SB-AMTI to complement current airborne sensing techniques by creating a persistent, global system capable of tracking airborne targets from space.
USSF SBST acting acquisition executive colonel Ryan Frazier said: “By focusing these capabilities to the space domain, we are providing the Joint Force with sustained battlespace awareness of contested airspace.
“We are beginning development and integration efforts immediately to meet the programme’s rapid deployment milestones and address emerging national security requirements.”
The SB-AMTI programme is structured as a system-of-systems. It will integrate advanced space-based sensors, secure communications, and ground processing infrastructure.
According to the SSC, this approach demonstrates a shift towards stronger collaboration within the government’s space industrial base.
The acquisition team is combining an OTA agreement with an Indefinite Delivery/Indefinite Quantity (ID/IQ) framework to manage the project. This approach is intended to offer flexibility and scalability in procurement.
A newly established SB-AMTI vendor pool is part of the initiative, aiming to draw upon existing commercial technologies and deliver solutions that meet urgent defence needs.
Frazier stated: “By utilising this multi-vendor framework, we are capitalising on established industry capacity and continuously evaluating and onboarding the best tech to field this essential capability at speed and scale.”
SpaceX is among several companies selected for the SB-AMTI vendor pool through previous competitive OTA agreements, following an announcement by Secretary of the Air Force Troy Meink at the Space Symposium in April 2026.
The current OTA agreement with SpaceX is expected to result in a satellite constellation deployed by 2028, with the intention of providing the Joint Force with an early capability to mitigate operational blind spots.
Shortly before the SB-AMTI contract, SSC also awarded SpaceX a $2.29bn firm-fixed-price OTA agreement for the Space Data Network (SDN) Backbone programme.
This initiative involves establishing a proliferated low Earth orbit (pLEO) satellite constellation to supply high-capacity, low-latency worldwide communications.
Under the SDN contract, SpaceX is required to deliver a fully operational prototype capability by the end of 2027.
