Concept of Millennium’s FOO Fighter constellation. Image: Millennium Space Systems

The Space Development Agency (SDA) on Tuesday said it has awarded Kratos Defense & Security Solutions a potential $116.7 contract to create and operate a missile defense fire control ground infrastructure in support of prototypes and potential operations.

Under the five-year award, a Kratos-led team will deliver and manage ground segment resources, equip and manage the government-owned, contractor-operated Demonstration Operations Center, manage a cloud environment purchased by the government for cloud services to include hosting space vehicle mission operations center software and interfacing with mission partner systems, and provide program management, systems engineering, integration, operations and maintenance of SDA’s Advanced Fire Control Ground Infrastructure (AFCGI).

The ground infrastructure will also be a key part of SDA’s Fire-control On Orbit-support to the warfighter (FOO Fighter) prototype system, a constellation of eight missile defense fire control satellites that Boeing’s Millennium Space Systems business is designing and building. The FOO Fighter satellites are slated to launch in late 2026 and are being designed to detect and track advanced missile threats, including hypersonic missiles.

Kratos said it will provide a Ground Resource Manager (GRM) based on its software-defined, cloud-native OpenSpace Ground Platform that will be built for FOO Fighter and future fire control demonstrations. The GRM will ensure that spacecraft built by different vendors can integrate their command-and-control missions into the AFCGI.

In addition to FOO Fighter, SDA said that the AFCGI will also support future fire-control demonstration programs for helping to counter advanced missile threats.

“The AFGCI will serve as a standing sandbox for exploring and validating new technologies, solutions and techniques to address these threats with commensurate speed and agility,” Phil Carrai, president of Kratos’ Space Division, said in a statement. “The GRM will enable the Space Force to capitalize on the best of breed technologies from across the most advanced developers, and seamlessly integrate an orchestrate their operations.”

Kratos received $17 million in initial funding for the AFCGI award using a combination of fiscal year 2024 and 2025 research and development funds. The company’s teammates include ASRC Federal Systems Solutions, Peraton, Sphinx Defense, and Stellar Solutions.

This story was first published by Defense Daily