Pentagon cancels troubled GPS control upgrade after $6.27 billion spent

A broken ground-control upgrade for GPS was finally cut loose after years of delays, mounting costs and technical failures that officials said could have put the system millions of civilians and U.S. forces depend on at risk.

The Space Force canceled the Next-Generation GPS Operational Control System, known as GPS OCX, on April 17 after concluding it could not deliver needed capability on an acceptable timeline or with acceptable risk. The program was meant to replace the Architecture Evolution Plan and the Launch, Anomaly and Disposal Operations system, the ground architecture that helps run the GPS III satellite constellation used by both military and civilian users. By January 2026, the program had already cost about $6.27 billion, up from an initial estimate of $3.7 billion, and it was roughly 10 years behind schedule.

Officials said the final break came after extensive integrated systems testing began in July 2025, following contract acceptance from RTX, then still known as Raytheon. Even then, the broader integration effort exposed problems across a wide range of capability areas. Col. Stephen Hobbs, commander of Mission Delta 31, said the issues were serious enough that continuing OCX was no longer the best way to protect and improve GPS, because further work could have endangered current military and civilian GPS capability.

The cancellation lands after more than two decades of uneven GPS modernization. In September 2024, the Government Accountability Office said the Department of Defense had been working for more than 20 years to modernize GPS with M-code, a more secure, jam-resistant military signal, but delays in the ground segment, space segment and user equipment had blocked broad use. The GAO said the ground segment still needed more testing and demonstration before acceptance, which had been projected for December 2025.

The troubled rollout also forced the Space Force to keep patching the legacy Architecture Evolution Plan over the past decade just to keep GPS running while OCX slipped. The service now operates 32 GPS satellites, including nine GPS III spacecraft, but it has not been able to fully use their enhanced capabilities without OCX Blocks 1 and 2. Those interim fixes helped enable encrypted M-code signals, but they did not solve the underlying control problem.

The stakes extend well beyond the Pentagon. Outgoing acquisition chief Frank Calvelli called OCX his biggest regret in a January 2025 interview, saying it was the linchpin for encrypted M-code access for about 700 U.S. military weapon systems and would be needed for the GPS IIIF follow-on constellation, whose first launches had been expected in 2027. Lockheed Martin is building those 22 next-generation satellites, and the Space Force’s decision now leaves the service leaning on upgraded legacy systems and interim fixes while it decides what comes next. RTX said it would work with the government on next steps.