LeoLabs is moving into the radar hardware business after a decade of selling orbital tracking data. The US Space Force handed the California company a $20M prototype agreement on Aug. 26 to field its transportable Scout radar, without naming the mission.
The deal follows research contracts that backed software for detecting foreign launches and tracking maneuverable objects such as missiles and hypersonic glide vehicles. Those earlier efforts pushed Scout from an experimental architecture toward military use.
Scout comes as a containerized search radar that moves by land, sea or air and slots into larger sensor networks, adding coverage where fixed sites are scarce, and the first version to reach operations, Scout-S, has been running space domain awareness in the Indo-Pacific this year with Scout-X planned for missile warning.
LeoLabs, which started in 2016 as a ground-radar operator, now tracks more than 26,000 objects in low Earth orbit through its commercial network, and chief executive Tony Frazier said the award widens the company’s national security reach.
The contract marks a pivot toward defense hardware, with radar systems and sensing technology pitched directly to US and allied governments. Transportable radars extend space domain awareness into contested regions, and the Scout-X line shows commercial sensing moving into missile warning work once reserved for dedicated government systems.
