The Pentagon has spent $8 billion and 16 years trying to get software for its GPS ground control system to work. It still doesn't work, and RTX's primary contract expired ten days ago.
That's the state of OCX, the Next-Generation Operational Control System, as of April 2026. The Air Force selected RTX Corporation, then known as Raytheon, in 2010 to build the software for $3.7 billion, with delivery scheduled for 2016. According to the GAO, the program already needed $1.1 billion more and four additional years by 2015 due to poor acquisition decisions and a slow recognition of development problems. That was eleven years ago. The cost is now $7.6 billion for the base system, plus more than $400 million for an OCX augmentation supporting the next GPS satellite batch, bringing the total to roughly $8 billion. Space Force accepted delivery from RTX last July. Nine months later, the system remains nonoperational.
The RTX contract option expired March 31. The Pentagon is now weighing whether to cancel the program entirely, Air & Space Forces Magazine reported.
OCX is the ground segment software designed to operate the military's GPS constellation, which consists of more than 30 active satellites. It was built specifically to handle the signals from GPS III, the newest generation of satellites, which began launching in 2018. More importantly, it is the system that would unlock the full capabilities of M-code, a jam-resistant and encrypted military GPS signal that US forces depend on. The US military has more than 700 weapons systems, including aircraft, ships, ground vehicles, and missiles, that rely on GPS for positioning and timing. M-code makes those signals harder to jam and spoof, a growing concern as GPS jamming and spoofing have become routine in war zones from Ukraine to the Middle East.
"The GPS network is an attractive target for adversaries," said Lt. Gen. Doug Schiess, Space Force deputy chief of operations. "Jamming and spoofing are a current and growing threat to GPS."
The capability gap created by OCX's failures has already forced the military to patch its legacy ground system. Upgrades in 2020 gave the Space Force partial access to M-code signals, but full exploitation of the encrypted signal requires OCX, which is still not operational. Thomas Ainsworth, assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition, told the House Subcommittee on Strategic Forces that testing uncovered extensive system issues across all subsystems, many of which remain unresolved. "For over 15 years, the program has experienced significant technical challenges, schedule slips, and associated cost growth," Ainsworth said. "There have been problems in program management, problems with contractor performance, problems in systems engineering, both on the government and on the contractor side."
A cancellation would leave the military flying GPS III satellites with a ground control system that was designed for the previous generation, and with the next batch of satellites, GPS IIIF, starting to launch next year. It would also raise the question of whether the $8 billion figure represents sunk cost that makes cancellation harder to justify than continuation, a dynamic that acquisition critics have long documented.
RTX, in a written statement to Ars Technica, said it delivered a mission-capable system and is working with the government on post-delivery concerns. The Space Force says it is weighing options. The satellites overhead cannot weigh in at all.
