WASHINGTON — Air Force officials now predict operational testing of chip cards to enable service-wide maritime and aviation platforms to receive jam- and spoof-resistant GPS signals will wrap up in fiscal 2027 — two decades after the first satellite carrying the signals, called M-code, was launched.
“[D]evelopment activity has already finished [and] we’re now in just operational checkout,” Col. Jameson Locklear, senior materiel leader for the M-Code Aviation Receivers Joint Program Office at the Air Force Life Cycle Management Center (AFLCMC), told reporters in Dayton, Ohio on Tuesday.
The Space Force and Air Force agreed last year to transition management of the multifaceted Military GPS User Equipment (MGUE) program, which is designed to equip the services with M-code capable kit, from the Space Systems Command (SSC) to AFLCMC.
It’s no small task. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) has estimated that up to a million M-code receivers could be required by the joint force to equip some 700 cross-service weapon systems — everything from ground vehicles for the Army to Navy destroyers, Air Force fighter jets and radios for individual Marines in the field.
The M-code program has been one of the Defense Department’s most troubled acquisition programs, as detailed in numerous reports by the GAO, as well as the Pentagon’s own Office of Test and Evaluation (DOT&E).
