Lockheed gets $68.5M deal for next-gen missile warning satellites

Lockheed Martin Space has been awarded a $68.5 million contract modification for the Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared Geosynchronous program, pushing the total cumulative value of the contract to $8.2 billion. Work will be performed in Boulder, Colorado, with completion expected by August 2028. Space Systems Command at Los Angeles Air Force Base in El Segundo, California, is the contracting activity.

Fiscal year 2026 research, development, testing, and evaluation funds in the amount of $17,194,677 are being obligated at the time of award. The contract modification, applied to work centered at Lockheed’s Boulder facility, keeps the Next-Gen OPIR GEO program on its development track as the U.S. military continues building out the satellite architecture intended to replace its current space-based missile warning constellation.

The Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared Geosynchronous program — known as Next-Gen OPIR GEO — is designed to detect ballistic missile launches from geosynchronous orbit, approximately 22,000 miles above the Earth’s surface. At that altitude, a satellite remains fixed over the same point on the ground continuously, giving it a persistent, unblinking view of large portions of the Earth’s surface around the clock. The satellites are equipped with new sensors specifically engineered to detect advanced adversary missile threats, including boost-phase signatures from missiles that burn faster and burn dimmer than older designs — characteristics deliberately engineered by adversaries to complicate detection by legacy infrared warning systems.

The new generation of satellites is built on Lockheed Martin’s LM 2100 combat bus, a spacecraft platform that incorporates resiliency features designed to address counter-space threats. As adversary nations have developed anti-satellite capabilities — including directed-energy weapons, jamming systems, and co-orbital threats — the Pentagon has required that new strategic space assets be hardened against interference and attack. The LM 2100 bus addresses those requirements, making Next-Gen OPIR GEO satellites more survivable in a contested space environment than the systems they are built to succeed.

Next-Gen OPIR GEO will enhance and eventually replace the Space Based Infrared System, known as SBIRS, which Lockheed Martin also developed. SBIRS has served as America’s primary space-based missile warning system and has accumulated a combat record that demonstrates the operational stakes of maintaining this capability without interruption. In 2020, SBIRS provided early warning to U.S. forces at Al-Asad Airbase in Iraq during a ballistic missile attack, giving personnel on the ground critical seconds to seek cover. In 2024, the system provided timely detection and early warning of hundreds of missiles launched at Israel, enabling the United States and its allies to track and intercept the incoming threats — a real-world demonstration of the system’s role at the intersection of strategic warning and active air and missile defense.

The transition from SBIRS to Next-Gen OPIR GEO is not simply a hardware refresh. The new program is engineered to handle a threat environment that has grown significantly more complex since SBIRS was designed. Modern adversary ballistic missiles, hypersonic glide vehicles, and fast-burn boosters all present detection challenges that stretch the limits of older infrared sensing technology. Next-Gen OPIR GEO’s sensors are purpose-built to close those detection gaps, ensuring that the United States retains reliable warning time against the full spectrum of current and emerging missile threats — a capability that underpins both missile defense operations and strategic nuclear deterrence.

The Boulder, Colorado, facility where this work is being performed is a hub of Lockheed Martin’s space systems engineering operations and has played a central role in the development of U.S. missile warning satellites for decades. The facility’s concentration of specialized talent and infrastructure for space-based sensing systems makes it the natural production and engineering center for a program of Next-Gen OPIR GEO’s complexity and national security sensitivity.

With the cumulative contract value now standing at more than $8.2 billion, Next-Gen OPIR GEO ranks among the most significant space acquisition programs in the U.S. defense portfolio. The scale of that investment reflects how central uninterrupted missile warning capability is to American strategic posture — from protecting forward-deployed troops against tactical ballistic missile attacks to providing the national command authority with the warning data needed to inform decisions during a strategic crisis.