Overview
- The Space Force designated Lake Kickapoo in north-central Texas as the preferred location for the third DARC site, which the service announced Sept. 9 and will move to formal approvals and contracting next.
- The program aims to award contracts and begin construction in 2027, finish civil work by 2029, and complete test and evaluation for operational acceptance in 2030, subject to required approvals.
- Northrop Grumman is the prime contractor building the radars and the FY2027 Space Force budget request includes $442 million for the program in fiscal 2027 and roughly $1.6 billion through fiscal 2031.
- DARC already has one sensor in western Australia in early operational use and a U.K. site in Wales selected in 2024 that remains pending planning approvals.
- The three-site network is governed by a 22-year trilateral memorandum of understanding and is designed to provide persistent GEO coverage to detect, track, and characterize objects that are hard to monitor with existing optical systems.