Space Force bets $437.6 million on a GEO swarm — with the company whose satellite mostly failed in orbit
The U.S. Space Force awarded Viasat and SES a combined $437.6 million contract on May 22 to build the first batch of satellites for a new military communications network called PTS-G Swarm 1. At roughly $109 million per satellite, it is not a cheap bet. The contractors also have spotty records.
Viasat is reusing technology from its ViaSat-3 broadband constellation. The first ViaSat-3 satellite, launched in 2023, mostly failed in orbit and is delivering a fraction of its anticipated capacity, according to Satellite Today. The company says the two upcoming satellites in the series will give it more capacity than its entire existing fleet, but that claim is unproven in orbit. SES brings heritage from its O3b mPOWER system, which experienced sporadic power module trip-offs on the first four satellites in medium Earth orbit, delaying the fifth and sixth launches from June to September 2022 while engineers investigated the issue.
The contract, announced May 22, covers four satellites (two from each company) scheduled for delivery by March 2029, according to SpaceNews. The Space Force described Swarm 1 as the first batch under the Protected Tactical Satcom-Global (PTS-G) program, which aims to deploy constellations of small satellites in the geostationary belt, a departure from the traditional approach of relying on a small number of large, expensive military communications spacecraft. The concept is designed to improve resilience by ensuring that the loss or disruption of a single satellite does not cripple coverage across an entire region.
The procurement is structured as a firm fixed-price contract under an indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity vehicle. That matters for the risk calculus: if either company runs into trouble building its spacecraft, the cost overruns fall on the contractor, not the Space Force. The government can also cycle in other awardees if one vendor slips badly. It is a deliberate transfer of development risk off the balance sheet and onto the companies.
The broader PTS-G procurement has an IDIQ ceiling of $4 billion across all five awardees, per Viasat's press release. The initial five firms awarded work under the program are Viasat, Northrop Grumman, Astranis, Intelsat General, and Boeing, each receiving $37.5 million under Delivery Order 1, according to Space Systems Command. A second procurement round is planned for 2028, covering four additional satellites with deployment targeted for 2031.
Viasat's satellite for this contract will use a dual-band X/Ka-band design derived from the ViaSat-3 architecture, a Viasat executive told SpaceNews last year. The company designed the PTS-G satellite specifically to leverage that technology. SES's spacecraft will draw on its O3b mPOWER heritage, which the company has been working to stabilize after the power module issues surfaced.
The delivery timeline, March 2029, gives both companies roughly three years to build, test, and deliver hardware that must function in the geostationary belt under military operational requirements. PTS-G satellites in this class typically weigh between 300 and 1,000 kilograms, according to SpaceNews, and promise faster deployment and more flexibility than traditional large GEO comsats.
If Swarm 1 delivers on time and performs, it validates the Defense Department's bet that commercial-derivative satellite designs can meet military resilience requirements at a lower cost per bird than traditional exquisite systems. If the heritage problems repeat, it hands ammunition to advocates who argue the Pentagon should stick with purpose-built military spacecraft. Space Force is about to find out which argument holds.