Air Force Secretary Troy Meink addresses media on April 15, 2026, at the annual Space Symposium. Photo: Space Foundation

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — The Department of the Air Force has awarded a contract for space-based air moving target indication (AMTI) to multiple vendors to begin development activities, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink said on Wednesday.

The contract for the first operational increment of a space-based AMTI system is expected “fairly shortly,” Meink said at the annual Space Symposium. Development efforts will continue and more providers will be added to the program, he said.

The Department of the Air Force, which includes the Space Force, had not previously disclosed the space-based AMTI indefinite-delivery, indefinite-quantity contract.

Meink also said that space-based AMTI technology is ready to go.

“Basically, the reason why we think that risk is fairly low is we have already demonstrated the ability to do AMTI from space,” he told reporters during a media roundtable. “So, there really isn’t a question of the technology.”

While several decades of work on space-based moving target indication technology may be paying off, workable MTI from Low-Earth Orbit also requires a concept of operations and poses systems engineering and integration challenges.

There have already been on-orbit demonstrations of the technology and more are planned to further develop the technology, Meink said on Wednesday.

“I would say we have on orbit data that says the technology and the physics work,” he said, adding that the “technology has been in the works for many decades, and that technology is actually being proven out.”

Asked about the maturity of the technology given that many analysts are skeptical that space-based AMTI is mature enough, Meink replied, “We always knew we could do this from space, though, really the only question was, could we do it affordably from space?”

The commercial sector has taken advantage of rapid advances in digital technology and applied it to AMTI and other challenges, bringing costs down, Meink said. The technology works, so “now it’s just how do we build it affordably and get it on orbit and make sure we have competition going forward, which has been part of as well, to keep that affordability long-term.”

The contractors developing the space-based AMTI technology are in different phases of development and they are in a position to “be delivering those capabilities very rapidly,” Meink said. Once fiscal year 2027 funding is agreed to and the “money is fed down to the system,” the AMTI and other programs “are ready to execute and ready to execute rapidly,” he said.

The Space Force’s FY ’27 procurement budget request seeks $7 billion for space-based AMTI and $1 billion for space-based ground moving target indication.

This story was first published by Defense Daily