Forging the Future: Inside the $259M Upgrade to America's Missile Shield

BROOMFIELD, Colo. – December 09, 2025 – In the silent, high-stakes theater of orbital defense, the speed of information is the ultimate arbiter of security. The U.S. Space Force has awarded a pivotal $259 million contract to enhance its ability to detect and track missile threats from space, a move that underscores a fundamental shift in military strategy. Prime contractor SciTec, Inc., a specialist in advanced sensor data processing, will lead the effort, bringing on SMX subsidiary Outside Analytics as a key partner to architect the system's sophisticated data-processing core. The contract, for the Future Operationally Resilient Ground Evolution (FORGE) Enterprise Overhead Persistent Infrared (OPIR) Solution (EOS), is more than a simple hardware upgrade; it represents a critical investment in achieving “decision superiority” in an era of hypersonic weapons and escalating geopolitical competition in space.

This initiative aims to overhaul the ground systems that form the brain of America's space-based missile warning enterprise, ensuring that data from orbital sensors is translated into actionable intelligence not in minutes, but in milliseconds.

The Architecture of Vigilance

The mission of Overhead Persistent Infrared (OPIR) satellites is one of the most critical and unforgiving in the national security portfolio: to provide 24/7 global surveillance for ballistic missile launches. It is, in military parlance, a “no-fail mission.” For decades, this mission has been anchored by systems like the Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS). However, the character of warfare is changing. The emergence of highly maneuverable hypersonic threats and the demonstrated anti-satellite capabilities of adversaries like China and Russia have rendered legacy ground architectures dangerously slow and vulnerable.

The FORGE EOS program is designed to solve this problem from the ground up. It builds upon the foundational work of the Mission Data Processing Application Framework (MDPAF) contract, which concluded in 2025. Unlike older, monolithic systems often locked to a single vendor, FORGE is being developed as a government-owned, modular, and cyber-secure framework. This open-architecture approach allows the Space Force to plug in best-in-class applications from a variety of vendors, fostering continuous innovation and preventing technological stagnation.

The new system's mandate is vast. It must not only process data from the existing SBIRS constellations in geosynchronous (GEO) and polar orbits but also seamlessly integrate information from the forthcoming Next-Gen OPIR satellites. Crucially, it is also being designed to handle the deluge of data expected from new, proliferated constellations in Medium and Low Earth Orbit (MEO and LEO), which provide greater resilience through sheer numbers. This ability to fuse data from disparate sources across multiple orbital planes is central to building a comprehensive, unblinking eye on global threats.

A Strategic Partnership for a Software-Defined Mission

At the heart of the FORGE EOS contract is a partnership between SciTec, a non-traditional defense contractor with deep OPIR experience, and Outside Analytics, a specialized software and data analytics firm acquired by SMX in 2023. This collaboration exemplifies the Space Force’s strategy of pairing mission-focused prime contractors with agile technology specialists.

SciTec, which secured a separate $272 million contract in 2022 to deliver critical missile warning applications, brings a 40-year heritage in OPIR processing. “Outside Analytics and SMX bring a deep technical expertise which we will leverage across multiple aspects of the FORGE Enterprise OPIR Solution,” said David Simenc, Vice President at SciTec, Inc. “We’re excited to partner with their team to deliver scalable, resilient capabilities that dramatically enhance the Space Force’s ability to protect and defend our nation, our armed forces, and our allies.”

Outside Analytics provides the specialized software engineering crucial for making the system's open architecture a reality. Their contribution focuses on real-time data processing, developing intuitive graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for operators, and building a scalable microservice architecture. This modern software approach allows new capabilities, such as AI-driven target detection algorithms and advanced visualizations, to be developed and deployed rapidly. It’s a move away from cumbersome, multi-year upgrade cycles and toward a model of continuous, mission-driven software delivery.

The partnership also highlights a shrewd market trend where larger defense and IT solutions providers like SMX acquire smaller, highly specialized firms to gain a competitive edge in critical government contracts. The 2023 acquisition of Outside Analytics directly positioned SMX to contribute to this vital national security mission, showcasing a powerful synergy between corporate growth strategy and defense modernization.

“This effort is critical to enable faster, threat-informed decision-making in space operations, and we’re proud to contribute our technical expertise to such a vital national security mission,” noted Ben Tarr, Co-Founder of Outside Analytics and Executive Vice President of Remote Sensing at SMX.

Accelerating Acquisition for a New Space Race

The FORGE EOS contract was not awarded through a traditional, slow-moving procurement process. Instead, it was facilitated as a competitive Other Transaction Authority (OTA) prototype agreement through the Space Enterprise Consortium (SpEC). This increasingly popular contracting vehicle allows the Department of Defense to cut through bureaucratic red tape and collaborate directly with a broader industrial base, including innovative commercial firms and non-traditional contractors that might otherwise avoid the cumbersome federal acquisition system.

This approach is a deliberate strategy by the Space Force to accelerate the delivery of new capabilities. By breaking the massive challenge of ground system modernization into manageable components and fostering a competitive ecosystem—which includes traditional giants like RTX, BAE Systems, and Lockheed Martin working on other parts of the enterprise—the service aims to build a more resilient and adaptable defense posture. This multi-vendor environment is designed to ensure the government retains control over the architecture, can integrate the best technology available at any given time, and is never beholden to a single company’s roadmap.

The strategy reflects a stark reality: the U.S. no longer enjoys uncontested dominance in space. The Space Force’s foundational doctrine, published in 2020, explicitly states that space is now a warfighting domain. This contract is a direct response to that reality, part of a broader push to build a more defensible and reconstitutable space architecture by 2026. By fielding systems that are modular by design, the military can adapt more quickly than its adversaries, a key tenet of modern deterrence theory. The FORGE EOS contract is a tangible step in turning that theory into operational hardware and software, ensuring that the United States can out-think, out-pace, and out-maneuver threats as they emerge.