The Doorway — Ground Stations & Antennas
A satellite is useless if you can't talk to it. The ground segment is in the middle of a once-a-generation upgrade.
Every photo, text, and command between Earth and a spacecraft passes through a ground station. Big steerable parabolic dishes are being supplemented by electronically-steered phased arrays that track multiple LEO birds simultaneously. Multi-orbit support — roaming between Starlink, OneWeb, Iridium, Kuiper, and military networks on the same terminal — is now table stakes. Kratos supplies the largest US commercial satellite ground network and is the primary vendor for the SDA's ground operations. Viasat owns gateway and aviation broadband. Gilat is the leading commercial VSAT vendor for LEO.
Every new constellation needs hundreds of new antennas plus orchestration software. Kratos's OpenSpace virtualized ground software is already the operational backbone for parts of SDA Tranche 0/1.
3 names on the watchlist
Dominant US commercial satellite ground network + hypersonics + Valkyrie drones + jet engines + SRMs
Q1 2026 revenue $371M (+22.6% YoY); organic growth 15.8%; book-to-bill 1.6×; record backlog $2.0B . FY26 revenue guidance raised to $1.700–1.760B. Hypersonics business on track for $400M in 2026 and $700M in 2027 ; "$1 billion-plus sole-source hypersonic program expansion verbal award" expected to be formalized shortly. Valkyrie XQ-58A drone scaling to ~40 units/year by early 2028. Jet-engine LRIP for cruise missiles begins later in 2026 (target: several thousand engines annually in 2027). Kratos OpenSpace virtualized ground software is the operational ground segment for parts of SDA Tranche 0/1. Per Q1 2026 8-K: "fiscal 2027 national security spend currently projected to be $1.5 trillion, an approximate $411 billion increase above Fiscal Year 2026."
Global satellite broadband + gateway/IFC + Inmarsat L-band spectrum
Operates ViaSat-3 broadband constellation (Flight 1 in service; Flight 2 entering service May 2026; Flight 3 launch late summer 2026), the Inmarsat L-band fleet , and the world's largest aviation IFC install base. Q3 FY26 revenue $1.16B (+3% YoY); adjusted EBITDA $387M (33% margin); backlog ~$4B. Management has guided to positive FCF in FY26.
Modems + gateway equipment + managed services for global constellation operators
Sells satellite modems, gateway equipment, managed network services . Acquisitions of Stellar Blu (electronically-steered antennas for IFC) and Wavestream (Ka-band HPAs for US government) shifted the mix toward higher-growth segments.