Raytheon, a business of RTX, has been selected to modernize long-serving U.S. Space Force radar sites that used to detect missile launches and monitor objects in space, with digital upgrades aimed at improving detection performance, reliability, and service life.
Announced on October 15, the Ground-Based Radar Digitization (GBRD) program will upgrade existing systems rather than replace the radar network outright, while establishing a common technical architecture designed to make future improvements easier to deploy.
The radars serve as an early-warning layer in the US missile-defense architecture, providing launch and tracking information in space. Raytheon plans to deliver prototype solutions before wider deployment across the remaining locations.
Modernizing the backbone of missile warning
According to Raytheon’s announcement, the upgrades are intended to strengthen space domain awareness and support a more resilient, layered security architecture. Raytheon will work alongside the Space Force and other industry partners to develop a common open architecture for the radar portfolio.
The architecture is intended to improve maintenance efficiency, reduce dependence on a single vendor, and simplify future performance upgrades. A shared technical baseline could also help the Space Force introduce new capabilities across multiple sites without developing separate approaches for each radar.
The broader program covers eight ground-based radars, according to Defense War Room’s report on the July prototype awards. These include five Upgraded Early Warning Radars, the Perimeter Acquisition Radar Attack Characterization System (PARCS), the Cobra Dane radar in Alaska, and the Eglin Site C-6 radar in Florida. The systems differ in mission and configuration, but all contribute to missile warning or space surveillance.
Prototypes will precede wider deployment
Raytheon’s approach uses a rapid-development process to establish a technical baseline for the GBRD portfolio before the technology is deployed more broadly.
The company says prototype solutions will come first, followed by rapid fielding at the remaining locations. The announcement did not identify which radar sites would receive the initial prototypes or provide a schedule for completing the work.
The prototype phase is important because the program must modernize existing infrastructure while maintaining the functions that military operators depend on. Upgrading long-serving systems also creates an opportunity to replace aging components and make future maintenance and software changes easier.
The Space Force has pursued digitization as part of a broader effort to improve the performance and maintainability of its ground-based radar network. The program’s open-architecture approach is intended to make those systems more adaptable as operational requirements evolve.
Contract value and timeline remain undisclosed
Raytheon’s October 15 announcement did not disclose the value of the award, the specific sites involved in its work, or a completion date for the prototypes and subsequent deployments. However, the Space Force awarded Raytheon a prototype agreement worth about $309.5 million in July 2026 as part of a broader set of agreements for the digitization program. That figure relates to the earlier prototype award, rather than a newly disclosed contract value in Raytheon’s latest announcement.
The modernization effort is intended to keep the radar sites providing missile-launch warning and space-monitoring data for decades. Its success will depend on delivering the new digital capabilities while preserving the reliability of systems that remain a critical part of US early-warning infrastructure.