Viasat has selected Rocket Lab to build a geostationary orbit (GEO) satellite for the U.S. Space Force's Protected Tactical Satcom-Global (PTS-G) program, with Rocket Lab providing a spacecraft based on its small-GEO platform. The announcement, made on August 17, 2026, positions the two companies as partners on one of the Space Force's priority initiatives for survivable tactical military communications.
Viasat holds a prime contract to deliver one of the first small, maneuverable GEO satellites for the PTS-G constellation, awarded by the Space Force's Space Systems Command.
What PTS-G Is and Why It Matters
Rocket Lab's small-GEO platform fits squarely within that doctrine.
Commercial Industry's Growing Role
Being selected by a major defense prime like Viasat to build hardware for a Space Force constellation marks a meaningful step in that trajectory.
For Viasat, tapping a specialist satellite manufacturer rather than building the bus in-house reflects a similar logic: leverage commercial expertise to move faster and potentially at lower cost, while concentrating its own engineering resources on the payloads and systems integration work where it holds differentiated capability.
The contract underscores a pattern that defense planners have been deliberately cultivating — pulling proven commercial technology into military programs to accelerate delivery timelines and inject competitive pressure into what has historically been a slow-moving procurement sector.
Financial terms of the Rocket Lab subcontract and a delivery schedule were not disclosed in the announcement.★
★ AI inference: One or more analytical conclusions in this article were drawn by the AI from cited facts and are not directly stated in the cited sources.