The U.S. military has spent two decades learning that GPS can be switched off from the ground. Xona Space Systems is betting it can sell the Pentagon a second switch, one its owner controls.
The company’s first six Pulsar satellites rode a SpaceX Bandwagon-5 rideshare to orbit on October 20. Co-founder and CEO Brian Manning told the MilSat Symposium at Silicon Valley Space Week that commercial service should open in early 2027.
The fallback most commercial users already have comes from China
Manning’s argument is about what happens when a receiver loses faith in GPS. Most commercial operators improve resilience by adding constellations, and the largest non-U.S. augmentation on offer is China’s BeiDou.
That integration is now routine in timing, agriculture and logistics supply chains, he said, describing it as a dependency that has worked its way through U.S. critical infrastructure. Receiver makers will not simply drop foreign signals, because doing so forfeits international sales.
Drones are already cutting the GPS chip
The clearest evidence of distrust sits on the battlefield. Military drone builders producing in the hundreds of thousands are removing the GPS chip outright, Manning said, because a false position fix is more dangerous than no fix at all.
His reasoning: inertial systems can carry a platform through jamming, but a spoofed coordinate sends it into friendly positions. He also warned that generating a false signal demands little technical skill.
Space Force counts down to GPS IIIF
Col. Jon Strizzi, who directs Space Systems Command’s Space Systems Integration Office, told the same panel that 14 GPS IIIF satellites are under contract. Five are in assembly, integration and test, with first deliveries due in mid-2027.
The gap between a 2027 delivery date and a drone fleet already discarding GPS is the market Xona is chasing.
