The U.S. Space Force has restarted its search for next-generation satellite-control antennas, issuing a Commercial Solutions Opening in June 2026 for the Satellite Communication Augmentation Resource (SCAR) program. The notice arrives months after the government terminated for convenience an estimated $1.7 billion SCAR contract tied to AeroVironment, resetting one of the service's most important ground-segment modernization efforts around commercially derived, electronically steered phased-array systems rather than a single bespoke design.
Background
SCAR exists to modernize the aging Satellite Control Network (SCN), the global backbone of parabolic dish antennas that command and track Defense Department satellites. According to the official SCAR fact sheet published by Kirtland Air Force Base, the program aims to augment the SCN with phased-array antennas capable of contacting many spacecraft at once, easing a contact bottleneck that has worsened as satellite constellations multiply.
The government originally awarded SCAR in 2022 to BlueHalo, with public estimates of the work ranging from roughly $1.4 billion to $1.7 billion over its life. AeroVironment acquired BlueHalo in 2025, inheriting the SCAR effort and its centerpiece phased-array design known as BADGER. That arrangement unraveled this year. As SpaceNews reported, the Space Force issued a stop-work order in January 2026 and then formally terminated the contract for convenience after the two sides could not agree on a firm-fixed-price commercialized solution. A termination for convenience is not a finding of contractor fault; it is a contractual off-ramp the government uses when its requirements or acquisition strategy change.
Key Details
The new approach abandons the single-vendor, custom-built model in favor of open competition built around commercially developed phased-array systems. The Space Force's Rapid Capabilities Office is driving the recompete, and the SAM.gov posting seeks information from industry on commercially developed, electronically steered phased-array antenna systems. The posting frames the work as the first of several anticipated increments for the SCAR program, signaling a phased buy rather than one monolithic award.
The capability gap the program targets is steep. Phased-array antennas can reportedly maintain contact with 18 to 20 satellites simultaneously, compared with a single spacecraft for the legacy parabolic dishes they would supplement. That is more than a tenfold increase in contact capacity per site, a margin that matters as proliferated constellations such as the Space Development Agency's transport and tracking layers come online and compete for limited ground-station time.
The restructured strategy emphasizes three themes that the earlier award struggled to satisfy: manufacturing capacity, supply-chain resilience, and fixed-price production at scale. Rather than fund continued development of a customized design, the government wants vendors to bring mature, commercially grounded hardware that can be produced in volume at a predictable price. That shift is the direct lesson of the AeroVironment breakdown, where the parties could not converge on a firm-fixed-price commercialized solution for the BADGER system.
The termination carried financial consequences. AeroVironment trimmed its fiscal 2026 revenue outlook to a range of $1.85 billion to $1.95 billion, down from a prior $1.9 billion to $2.0 billion, and recorded a non-cash goodwill impairment of about $151 million tied to the BADGER work. The company has signaled it intends to pursue the BADGER antenna commercially, meaning the design at the center of the canceled contract could still compete in the new open process or find buyers elsewhere in the government and allied markets.
What It Means for Contractors
The SCAR reset is a clear signal about how the Space Force intends to buy ground-segment hardware going forward, and the implications reach well beyond a single antenna program. The service is telling industry it values commercially mature, producible systems over custom engineering programs that carry development risk and resist firm-fixed-price terms. Vendors with existing phased-array product lines, including those serving commercial satellite-ground and telecommunications markets, now have an opening that did not exist under the prior sole-source structure.
The move also illustrates the financial exposure that comes with large, development-heavy awards. AeroVironment held a contract estimated near $1.7 billion and still saw it terminated and its revenue guidance trimmed when the pricing model could not be settled. For contractors, the takeaway is that winning a headline award is not the same as locking in revenue; the government's willingness to walk away over commercialization and pricing disputes is real, and a stop-work order can convert a marquee program into a cut to the annual outlook within weeks.
Firms weighing a bid should study the Rapid Capabilities Office's appetite for fixed-price production. The office's framing rewards bidders who can demonstrate manufacturing throughput and supply-chain depth rather than promising future development. That favors companies that have already invested in production tooling and component sourcing for phased-array hardware, and it disadvantages those whose proposals hinge on maturing a new design after award. The increment-based structure described in the SAM.gov notice also lets the government spread risk and award incrementally, which means early performance on a first tranche could shape access to follow-on increments.
Finally, the recompete keeps the door open to the very design the government walked away from. Because AeroVironment plans to pursue BADGER commercially, the new competition could feature the incumbent design competing on commercial terms against rival phased-array offerings. Contractors entering this field should expect a crowded, price-sensitive contest in which production credibility and supply-chain resilience carry as much weight as raw technical performance, and in which the program's history offers a cautionary lesson about the gap between a bespoke prototype and an affordable, manufacturable system.
