Dubbed “Dragoon,” the satellite was one of the multiple payloads launched from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Monday via a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket as part of the company’s Transporter-14 smallsat rideshare mission, according to SDA. The spacecraft is the first of 12 prototype satellites developed by York Space Systems under SDA’s Tranche 1 Demonstration and Experimentation System (T1DES) program to go on orbit.

In 2022, York Space Systems received a $200 million other transaction agreement from SDA to develop and deliver 12 T1DES platforms that were slated for launch beginning in fiscal 2026. However, the company accelerated delivery of the first payload to prepare it for Monday’s mission “in response to an identified agency need,” York said in a statement.

“The Dragoon mission showcases exactly why our rapid mission delivery model matters,” Melanie Preisser, York’s general manager and executive vice president, said in a statement. “When SDA needed this capability sooner, we didn’t just accelerate, we delivered. That kind of responsiveness is what today’s defense posture demands.”

SDA did not provide many details about the specific demonstration that the recently deployed Dragoon satellite will conduct on orbit, but noted in a statement that the payload will enable “tactical data delivery to warfighter platforms to support capabilities like targeting, missile warning and tracking of advanced missile threats” and “support integration with tactical [SATCOM] system capabilities from low Earth orbit.”

Broadly, birds developed under the T1DES program will augment the Tranche 1 transport layer of the agency’s future mega-constellation known as the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) and inform requirements for future programs.

“T1DES will demonstrate mission payloads and configurations for potential proliferation through future tranches of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture in an effort to lower latency of tactical data delivery and enhance beyond line-of-sight targeting capability,” SDA Director Derek Tournear said in a statement. “We’re very pleased to see this prototype space vehicle launch four months ahead of the original T1DES baseline schedule and before the first launch of Tranche 1’s operational space vehicles.”

The PWSA is a planned LEO constellation comprising hundreds of satellites carrying data relay, communications, missile warning and missile-tracking capabilities that will be launched in increments — known as tranches — every two years. The first operational batch of PWSA payloads known as Tranche 1 were expected to launch in September 2024, but supply chain bottlenecks and recent leadership instability have forced the agency to push the mission to late summer 2025.

The remaining 11 T1DES satellites are on track to launch sometime in fiscal 2026, SDA said in a statement. Once deployed, the constellation “will conduct demonstrations and experimentation of TACSATCOM, advanced waveforms, and Integrated Broadcast Service (IBS) capabilities, which are key for future connectivity of joint warfighters around the globe,” according to the agency.

SDA is also pursuing a second batch of experimental birds for Tranche 2 of the transport layer — an effort known as Tranche 2 Demonstration and Experimentation System (T2DES). The agency intends to leverage its new vendor pool established by the Hybrid Acquisition for Proliferated Low Earth Orbit (HALO) program to contract the effort.

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“Effective 17 April, 2025, Dr. Derek Tournear will return to his duties as the Director of the Space Development Agency,” a DAF spokesperson said in a statement. 

The department announced Jan. 16 that Tournear was placed on administrative leave pending the results of an ongoing investigation and put Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, head of Space Force’s Space Systems Command, in charge of the agency temporarily. Garrant was then replaced by William Blauser, deputy director of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, as SDA’s acting director in February.

While the DAF has not provided details regarding the investigation’s scope, Breaking Defense reported that Tournear was placed on administrative leave following an alleged contract dispute over SDA’s award for the Gamma variant of the Tranche 2 Transport Layer.

In August, SDA awarded prototype agreements to Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems — a Terran Orbital company — and York Space Systems to each develop and build 10 Gamma space vehicles. The variants are intended to advance the agency’s experimental fire control efforts and will be part of SDA’s mega-constellation in low-Earth orbit known as the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture.

However, Viasat protested the award in September in the U.S. Court of Federal Claims. According to court documents, Viasat claims the company’s proposal was undervalued by SDA while Tyvak and York Space Systems received additional guidance from the agency on how they could improve their bids, potentially giving them an unfair advantage.

SDA has since revoked Tyvak’s $254 million award for the 10 Gamma variant satellites and announced in March it will recompete the award. The $170 million contract to York Space Systems has not been affected by the bid protest.

As of press time, the Department of the Air Force did not immediately respond to DefenseScoop’s inquiry on the status and results of the investigation into Tournear.

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Although SDA planned to validate the technology’s utility in Tranche 0 of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), the agency “has not yet successfully demonstrated the full range of its laser communications technology in space using its new [optical communications terminal] standard” as of December 2024, the Government Accountability Office wrote in a new report published Wednesday. 

As a result, the watchdog is recommending that SDA complete testing of the “minimum viable product” for laser link technology before pursuing future efforts — otherwise the organization runs the risk of moving forward with the PWSA’s development without incorporating critical lessons learned.

On-orbit laser communications involves using optical communications terminals (OCTs) to transmitting data via laser links between satellites, as well as to receivers located on land, sea and in the air. The technology is considered to have several advantages over radio frequencies traditionally used by the Defense Department for communications, such as being able to send data faster and more securely.

Laser comms are central to SDA’s planned mega-constellation known as the PWSA, envisioned as hundreds of satellites stationed in low-Earth orbit that create a “mesh network” of data relay, missile warning and missile-tracking capabilities for the U.S. military. However, the agency has previously stated that proving out laser links will be a challenging technological hurdle — a fact also noted in GAO’s new report.

“[T]his technology is much more complex, and the Space Force is working with multiple vendors to develop it. Nevertheless, the number of vendors involved adds further complexity to the overall effort,” the document stated. “Among other things, the Space Force will need to ensure that different vendors’ satellite optical communications terminals (OCT), devices used to establish laser data transmission links, are able to communicate with each other.”

The watchdog noted that SDA has taken steps to prove the technology, such as developing a government OCT standard, conducting OCT laboratory tests and maturing various component capabilities. But overall, efforts to fully demonstrate space-based laser links on the agency’s experimental satellites known as Tranche 0 have not moved as quickly as expected, according to GAO. 

Delays have been largely attributed to supply chain challenges that pushed the constellation’s launch back by several months. SDA has also stalled in demonstrating laser links in orbit due to challenges in coordinating ground support and the agency’s prioritization of other technologies over laser communications, the report added.

“Specifically, as of December 2024, SDA reported that one of its four prime contractors in [Tranche 0] had demonstrated three of the eight planned laser communications capabilities while another contractor had demonstrated one of the eight capabilities,” GAO officials wrote. “The remaining two contractors have not yet achieved any planned capabilities.”

In January, York Space Systems and SpaceX announced they had successfully demonstrated a laser link connection between two of their Tranche 0 satellites. However, the GAO report emphasized that the two companies are using OCTs developed by the same subcontractor, meaning “SDA has yet to demonstrate a link between two OCT vendors in space as originally planned.”

Furthermore, the watchdog claims that the agency’s plans to launch the first operational batch of PWSA satellites — known as Tranche 1 — in the coming months without having fully demonstrated its enabling technology does not align with best practices for rapid delivery of complex tech.

Dubbed “spiral development,” SDA’s acquisition approach for the PWSA involves rapidly fielding systems through incremental “tranches” every two years, allowing for each phase to build upon previous iterations and ensuring warfighters are using the most advanced technology available.

“Our leading practices emphasize that prioritizing schedule — as SDA has done — and using an iterative development approach can support delivering products with speed to users,” the report stated. “However, our leading practices also note that speed cannot come at the cost of demonstrating critical capability.”

The watchdog noted SDA still intends to demonstrate a Tranche 0 mesh network before it launches Tranche 1 — although the agency will test only some of the capabilities it originally planned. At the same time, the report highlighted that SDA’s goal to dramatically increase both the number of PWSA satellites in orbit and the complexity of their capabilities could be compromised if the agency doesn’t have demonstrated success from previous tranches. 

“Since [Tranche 1] and [Tranche 2] are already in development, SDA may have limited opportunities to incorporate required design changes into those designs,” officials wrote. “Incorporating design changes in those tranches could potentially delay capability, meaning that laser communications capability required to support multiple DOD missions may not be available for the warfighter as planned.”

GAO said the Pentagon has concurred with the four recommendations in the report, but added that the department “believes it is already implementing our recommendations” — a position the watchdog disagreed with.

“The evidence presented throughout our draft and final report supports our view that SDA is not already taking the actions we recommend. We continue to believe SDA would benefit from taking steps aimed at implementing our recommendations,” GAO concluded.

The report’s release comes after weeks of controversy surrounding the Space Development Agency, which is currently having its semi-independent acquisition authority being reviewed by the Pentagon, according to a report from Breaking Defense. At the same time, the Department of the Air Force has placed SDA Director Derek Tournear on administrative investigative leave following a bid protest that has since prompted the agency to re-compete one of the PWSA’s contracts.

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SDA is charged with development of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), a planned mega-constellation comprising hundreds of data relay, missile warning and missile tracking satellites stationed in low-Earth orbit.

The department first announced Jan. 16 that SDA head Derek Tournear had been placed on administrative leave pending the results of an ongoing investigation. At the time, officials placed Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, currently serving as commander of the Space Force’s Space Systems Command (SSC), in charge of the agency on a temporary basis.

“Given the importance of space acquisition programs, both the Space Development Agency and Space Systems Command require full-time leadership, and the Department of the Air Force has named Mr. Blauser as SDA’s new acting director,” a spokesperson said in a statement.

The decision to place Tournear on administrative leave came from then-Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration Frank Calvelli. Although the DAF has not commented on the specific nature for the investigation, Breaking Defense reported that Tournear allegedly did not follow appropriate contracting procedures ahead of SDA’s award for the Gamma variant of the Space Force’s Tranche 2 Transport Layer in August.

Blauser has been serving as the deputy director of the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office since July 2024, where he oversees the service’s study, development and fielding activities for a range of emerging technologies.

Prior to his current role, he has held numerous acquisition and leadership positions within government — including at the National Reconnaissance Office, the Office of the Secretary of Defense and U.S. Special Operations Command. Blauser also has previous experience working in the defense industry.

Blauser will now lead SDA during the highly anticipated launch of the first operational batch of PWSA space vehicles — slated for sometime in March or April of this year — while it continues to contract for future tranches.

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“We do not have the industrial capacity built today to get after this,” Vice Chief of Space Operations Gen. Michael Guetlein said Dec. 7 during a panel at the Reagan National Defense Forum. “We’re going to have to start getting comfortable with the lack of efficiency in the industrial base to start getting excess capacity so that we have something to go to in times of crisis and conflict.”

Resilience through proliferation

Historically, the Defense Department tended to develop a few very large and exquisite satellites to conduct critical military missions. But with the growing use of space as a warfighting domain by both the United States and its adversaries, the Pentagon is now focusing on different ways to build resilience in its space systems — such as by launching hundreds of smaller, inexpensive satellites for a single constellation.

At the forefront of the relatively novel approach is the Space Development Agency’s spiral acquisition strategy that is being used for the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA). Once it’s built out, the constellation is expected to comprise hundreds of satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO) and include space vehicles carrying different communications, data relay, missile warning and missile tracking capabilities.

SDA plans to field systems in batches every two years, with each iteration carrying the latest technology available. Although the first operational satellites known as Tranche 1 were slated to launch in fall 2024, that deadline has since been delayed to March or April 2025 due to supply chain bottlenecks, according to SDA Director Derek Tournear.

“I will say that what we’re seeing in the supply chain in the small LEO market has caught up to what SDA’s needs are, but it took them about eight months longer than they anticipated to ramp up,” Tournear said during a panel at the Reagan National Defense Forum. 

A total of 158 satellites are being developed for Tranche 1 of the PWSA: 126 data transport sats, 28 missile warning/missile tracking sats and four missile defense demonstration sats. The agency will also launch 12 tactical demonstration satellites under the Tranche 1 Demonstration and Experimentation System (T1DES) initiative to test new capabilities that can be leveraged in future PWSA tranches.

Across that order, four prime contractors are on the program — York Space Systems, Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin and L3Harris — and each of them is working with dozens of subcontractors.

Executives from various Tranche 1 primes who spoke to DefenseScoop acknowledged that they encountered supply chain bottlenecks in their work for the contract. Issues have now mostly been resolved and the vendors are on track to launch by the new deadline, they said.

However, companies are still using those lessons learned to mitigate setbacks for future tranches that go beyond just purchasing long-lead items.

“We’re seeing the results of that demand signal that SDA has been sending us on a very consistent basis through their spiral tranche acquisition. Is it perfect yet? No. We’ve got some places to go,” Rob Mitrevski, vice president and general manager of spectral solutions at L3Harris, said in an interview.

Tranche 1 isn’t the first time SDA has experienced delays. The agency was forced to push back the launch of Tranche 0 — a group of 27 satellites that served as a proof of concept for the entire PWSA — by about six months.

The holdup was attributed to supply chain bottlenecks that emerged during the COVID-19 pandemic when many manufacturers were forced to slow or stop production lines. Specific microelectronic components such as resistors were particularly difficult to buy, Mitrevski noted.

The recent issues aren’t caused by COVID-19 conditions, but are instead reflective of the sheer volume of systems SDA is asking of its contractors and an industrial base that wasn’t quite ready to meet the increased demand.

“I think a lot of that has been just scaling — getting past designing tens of things to designing lots of things,” Louis Christen, senior director of proliferated systems at Northrop Grumman, said during a tour of the company’s Space Park facility in Redondo Beach, California, where it’s manufacturing Tranche 1 birds.

To alleviate potential risk, Northrop Grumman has been moving through production as much as possible and building multiple satellites in parallel, Christen said. Working very closely with its multiple subcontractors throughout the process has been another critical strategy.

“Although they’re commercial suppliers, we’re not just buying stuff from them. We’re a partner. We’re there on a daily basis and helping prop them up,” he said.

Dirk Wallinger, CEO and president of York Space Systems, said challenges the company had weren’t specific to its Tranche 1 contracts, but actually reflect a lack of diversity in the supply chain that is affecting the entire space industry. 

“One of the key bottlenecks results from [requests for proposals] with subsystem performance specifications that inadvertently narrow the qualified vendor pool to a single supplier,” Wallinger told DefenseScoop. “This limits the value tradeoffs of all of the prime contractors and by creating dependency on sole-source suppliers, exacerbates delays.”

Addressing the problem would require rethinking high-level performance requirements in a manner that would diversify the supplier base and enable more competition in industry, he added.

L3Harris is also trying to move away from single or sole-source suppliers by building strong relationships with the swath of subcontractors it has worked with on all three of its contracts for the PWSA, Mitrevski said.

“The supply chain works to create scale over time, and the scale is created through a diverse group of suppliers,” he said. “What you’ve seen in the way we’ve evolved from [Tranche 0] through now [Tranche 1] and [Tranche 2] is a continual improvement of the scale and diversity in that supply chain.”

Wallinger noted that they’ve found the most effective way to mitigate supply chain risks has been to buy satellite buses from providers ahead of receiving mission specifications. In the future, it’s crucial that the government secures these long-lead items as early as possible to effectively eliminate delays, he added.

“Schedule risk is mostly induced from bus component suppliers, not mission payload developers,” Wallinger said. “Commoditized satellite buses are the only ones being considered, and by definition can support a range of mission sets. They are the critical component to procure in advance.”

Mitigating future delays

While SDA has tried to ensure its system requirements can leverage readily available hardware, Tournear said there are some components that must be tailor-made for the Tranche 1 satellites. Mesh network encryption devices that are approved by the National Security Agency have been a significant headache because there’s only one manufacturer able to make them, he said.

The agency has adjusted its timeline expectations for future PWSA tranches to allow more time for vendors to build their platforms, adding several months to overall production time.

Mitrevski also noted that SDA’s overall strategy to fund development of capabilities that can be tested early on is beneficial. 

“They have a number of efforts where they’ve clearly acquired leading-edge capabilities with the intention of driving the maturity level of those leading-edge capabilities forward and then make use of them later on,” he said. 

York Space Systems has also discussed with SDA ways to mitigate risks outside of supply chain diversification, Wallinger said. One area of improvement could be ensuring long-lead items are aligned with current and future mission requirements, he noted.

“We have had several instances where the second- and third-tier suppliers had stock on hand, but that stock didn’t have the right interface protocols or didn’t have the right form factor, and couldn’t be used to meet the actual mission needs,” he said. “So you had those suppliers spending capital on things that simply had to be completely redone at a cost to the [U.S. government] and us.”

But with plans to only grow the number of military satellites on orbit — not just for the PWSA, but also other programs across the Defense Department — SDA’s work is likely going to create a ripple effect of both growth and demand within the industrial base. The supply chain woes are serving as a “canary in the coal mine” for the national security space community writ large, and will require the entire department’s effort to fix them, Guetlein said.

“Because of the quantities that he’s ordering, he’s now starting to uncover the challenges that we have with the industrial base,” Guetlein said, referring to Tournear. “And these challenges are significant, and we need to figure out how to get after them.”

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As part of the HALO pool of pre-approved vendors, the selected businesses will now be able to compete for demonstrations and experimentation task orders that will support future tranches of SDA’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA). Each company has received an other transaction agreement (OTA) with an initial $20,000 to compensate for administrative and other expenses, according to the agency.

HALO task orders will focus on “rapid end-to-end mission demonstrations with launch of two identical satellites 12-18 months after award,” according to SDA.

The first prototype orders for HALO will be for the Tranche 2 Demonstration and Experimentation System (T2DES) project — intended to augment the Tranche 2 transport layer of communications and data relay satellites by demonstrating proliferation of future tactical data links and optical communications missions.

“Through HALO, SDA has an even faster and more flexible contracting mechanism in place to compete and award T2DES and other SDA demonstration projects,” SDA Director Derek Tournear said in a statement. “We believe HALO will also increase the pool of performers capable of bidding on future SDA programs, including participation in layers of future tranches.”

The PWSA is expected to comprise hundreds of satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO) that carry critical warfighting capabilities for data transport and missile defense missions. SDA is fielding the constellation in tranches. It plans to launch the first operational batch of satellites in early 2025, with each subsequent tranche going on orbit every other year.

The agency is also leveraging the PWSA to test out emerging capabilities on orbit through a range of experimental projects, including T2DES and the Fire-control On Orbit-support-to-the-war Fighter (FOO Fighter) program, among others.

Although SDA has not shied away from giving contracts to defense space newcomers, many of the awards for the PWSA have gone to well-known players like Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. On the other hand, HALO looks to open doors for non-traditional and commercial companies to work with the agency and mature their technologies.

The companies chosen for the initial HALO vendor pool are: Airbus U.S. Space & Defense; Apex Technology; ST Space Mobile USA; Astro Digital; Capella Space; CesiumAstro; Firefly Aerospace; Geneva Technologies; Impulse Space; Kepler Communications; Kuiper Government Solutions; LeoStella; Momentus Space; Muon Space; NovaWurks; SpaceX; Turion Space; Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems; and York Space Systems.

Only firms that have been selected to participate in the vendor pool will be able to compete for the prototyping efforts under HALO. SDA expects to award multiple contracts each year for the effort and will review the pool periodically, according to the agency.

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As part of the Proliferated Space Warfighter Architecture (PWSA), SDA is developing both a missile tracking and custody layer comprising hundreds of small satellites that will be stationed in low-Earth orbit (LEO) and able to sense and track advanced missile threats. The custody layer will be the main sensing capability that conducts ISR — a role for which the Defense Department has traditionally relied on partners in the National Reconnaissance Office or commercial industry.

“Moving forward, we see there are a lot of niche missions where the fine line between what is the tracking mission and what becomes the custody mission starts to get blurred,” Tournear said during a media roundtable at AFA’s Air, Space and Cyber conference. “If you’re going after more and more advanced, specialty-type missile systems, that’s tracking, but it can also be the custody mission.”

The Department of the Air Force has been working alongside members of the intelligence community to migrate some of its airborne moving target indication capabilities into the space domain. The Space Force this year received funding via the department’s new Quick Start authority to begin work for a program known as Long Range Kill Chains, a joint effort with the NRO to develop ground moving target indicator (GMTI) sensors and auxiliary payloads that will replace part of the E-8C JSTARS fleet.

SDA already has some programs underway that will experiment with fire-control solutions for address advanced missile threats, such as the experimental Fire-control On Orbit-support-to-the-war Fighter (FOO Fighter) satellites and the Gamma variant of the Tranche 2 data transport layer, Tournear said.

While the agency does not have any near-term plans to work on a solicitation to industry for additional space-based ISR capabilities or programs, he added that it anticipates doing so shortly.

“In the future, we do see SDA building more sensing satellites to be able to do some of those niche missions that aren’t being done by others, to do that sensing aspect for some very, very hard targets and then be able to pull that into our transport layer,” he told reporters.

At the same time, SDA is gearing up to launch the first operational satellites within the PWSA in early 2025, Tournear said. The agency originally intended to put the Tranche 1 birds into orbit before the end of 2024, but it pushed the date back a few weeks due to supply chain problems experienced by some of the prime vendors’ subcontractors.

SDA is also adjusting its acquisition strategy for future tranches of transport and tracking satellites to allow more time for vendors to build their platforms. Previous contracts required industry to have systems ready to launch within two-and-a-half years of the contract date — a requirement that the organization is now extending to three years. Because of that, the agency has moved up when it plans to release solicitations for Tranche 3 PWSA satellites by several months, Tournear added.

“Two-and-a-half years for order to orbit is exceptionally difficult. I think that industry will get there, but it takes time to build up,” he told reporters. “Three years for order to orbit is what we’ve been seeing industry be able to do, even when they’re going as fast as they can.”

Updated on Sept. 17, 2024, at 8:10 AM: A previous version of this story incorrectly stated that SDA has delayed solicitations for Tranche 3 PWSA satellites by several months. The agency has in fact moved up when it plans to release the solicitations. This story has been updated to reflect that.

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Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems — a Terran Orbital company based in Irvine, California — is one of two contractors selected to build Gamma variant platforms for tranche two of the data transport layer of the Pentagon’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), the agency announced Friday.

Tyvak was awarded a prototype agreement with a total value of approximately $254 million to build and operate 10 platforms, according to a release.

Denver-based York Space Systems, which was already doing prime vendor work for the agency, was also awarded a prototype agreement with a total value of about $170 million to build and operate 10 satellites.

Launches are slated to begin in late fiscal 2027.

SDA is once again using other transaction authority to get companies on contract. It received eight bids for the tranche two gamma variant before picking the winners, according to the agency.

“With these T2TL – Gamma awards, we are closing out the hardware procurement phase for Tranche 2 of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture to support delivery beginning in 2026 to achieve our full warfighting capability,” SDA Director Derek Tournear said in a statement. “The T2TL – Gamma space vehicles will demonstrate global communications access and operationalize persistent global encrypted connectivity to support missions like beyond line of sight targeting.”

The PWSA is expected to eventually include hundreds of satellites stationed in low-Earth orbit. SDA is deploying them in successive batches known as tranches. The architecture includes a data transport layer and a missile warning and missile-tracking layer.

The architecture is a key component of the Pentagon’s future warfighting construct known as Combined Joint All-Domain Command and Control (CJADC2), a departmentwide effort to better connect the data streams, sensors and shooters of the U.S. military services and key allies and partners under a more unified, fast-moving network.

The data layer will comprise satellites across three different configurations called Alpha, Beta and Gamma, respectively, that have common baseline mission payloads but provide different capabilities. According to a solicitation issued earlier this year, the Gamma variants will be uniquely equipped with the secretive Warlock mission payload that is “specifically designed to close future kill chains.”

SDA previously awarded contracts to Northrop Grumman and York Space Systems for the Alpha variants of tranche two, and to Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Rocket Lab National Security for the Beta variants.

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In late 2023, the agency initiated contracting efforts for the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture Future Program (PFP) Ground Segment Integration (PGI) program — intended to provide ground infrastructure and resources for a range of experimental missions on orbit. After receiving feedback from industry, SDA has modified the program’s scope to concentrate on ground support for the Fire-control On Orbit-support-to-the-war Fighter (FOO Fighter) satellites and other fire-control satellites.

Speaking to a small group of reporters Friday, Tournear explained that officials decided to change the PGI program because the initial requirements for the effort were too broad for industry to execute.

“It would have been very difficult for us to scope in a way that a vendor could properly bid,” he said. “If we wanted them to bid the ground support for everything from a small CubeSat-type demo that could have extremely high classification requirements, to something that was very open but a larger satellite, such as FOO Fighter, the requirements were significantly different.”

Now, the agency plans to award two separate contracts for fire-control ground infrastructure: the Advanced Fire Control Ground Integration (AFCGI) and the Advanced Fire Control Mission Integrator (AFCMI).

The vendor contracted for the AFCGI effort will be responsible for building out the developmental operations center at Redstone Arsenal, where they will provide the ground infrastructure, cloud hosting capabilities and IT resources for the ground entry points of the fire-control satellites, Tournear said.

At the same time, the AFCMI contract will include capabilities to fuse data from FOO Fighter and other fire-control satellites so that it can be passed off to warfighters, he noted.

“We were getting feedback from a lot of different vendors that the skill sets were significantly different enough that we would not be getting the best of breed if we mixed them together and essentially forced them to do different teaming agreements,” Tournear said. “They would make compromises on [things like], to get the best mission integrator they might not have the best ground integrator, or vice versa.”

SDA will post a notice to industry Friday detailing the restructuring, Tournear said. An official request for proposals for AFCGI is slated to be posted by mid-June, followed by a second RFP for AFCMI by the end of the summer.

The agency plans to award contracts for the effort starting in December, with the intention to have all of the necessary ground infrastructure and mission integration capabilities in place by summer of 2026.

SDA awarded Boeing-subsidiary Millennium Space Systems a $414 million contract in April to build eight satellites for the FOO Fighter program. The small constellation is intended to demonstrate next-generation fire-control capabilities — using sensors to create high-fidelity tracking data of advanced missile threats, such as hypersonic weapons, that includes the exact position and time accuracy needed to intercept and defeat them.

Because it is an on-orbit experimental program, the satellites are not directly part of SDA’s upcoming mega-constellation of missile tracking and data relay satellites known as the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA). The agency is currently targeting a launch date in the first quarter of fiscal 2027 for FOO Fighter.

As for the other demonstrations planned for the PFP effort that are not related to fire-control, the prime contractors will be responsible for supporting ground infrastructure and integration efforts moving forward, Tournear said. Upcoming contracts for these programs — like the Transport Layer Tranche 2 Demonstration and Experimentation System (T2DES) effort — will include additional ground support requirements, he noted.

“The ground efforts for those, we will treat more as experiments and we will have that be part of the scope for the space vehicle vendors themselves,” he explained. “Anything that is part of the PFP program that is very experimental by nature, the ground and operations will be done by the space vehicle vendors.”

The agency will have to modify some of the contracts already awarded, such as those to York Space Systems for the Tranche 1 Demonstration and Experimentation System (T1DES) program and Ball Aerospace for the National Defense Space Architecture Experimental Testbed (NExT) satellites. Tournear noted that SDA is already in discussions with both vendors to do so.

“They’re not significant changes, as the programs were already going to incorporate a good portion of the ground,” he said. “But as mentioned, since they’ll be providing their own ground entry points there will be some modifications.”

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SDA is currently developing a satellite constellation known as the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) that will be launched in batches known as tranches. With hundreds of satellites stationed in low-Earth orbit, the architecture aims to incrementally provide critical capabilities for the armed forces, such as satcom, missile warning and missile tracking. 

A significant effort for early tranches of the data transport layer focused on offering and proliferating the Link 16 tactical data link from space-based systems. Moving forward, SDA Director Derek Tournear said the agency is considering what other waveforms it wants to equip on Tranche 3.

“Transport is shifting from Link 16 … What we have with 126 Link 16 satellites in Tranche 1 and the 100 Link 16 satellites in Tranche 2 — we’ll have very good coverage for the Link 16 mission,” Tournear told reporters Wednesday during a media roundtable at the annual Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado. “The next big debate going on for transport is: what are the next tactical data links that we’re going to proliferate in Tranche 3?”

Link 16 is the only common tactical data link used across the United States’ military branches and the NATO alliance. SDA equipped its demonstration tranche of PWSA satellites with some Link 16 payloads and began demonstrating the first-ever space-to-ground transmissions of the data link in November 2023.

And while Tranche 3 is likely to include some Link 16 payloads to ensure overall resiliency of the capability, Tournear said a majority of the satellites will offer tactical satcom within the S-band — although which specific waveforms those could be are still up for debate.

The Beta variant of the Tranche 2 transport layer focused on providing tactical satcom via the S-band and Ultra High Frequency band down to very specific platforms, Tournear noted.

“What we do on Tranche 3 is being informed by what radios those platforms are actually planning on flying in that time frame,” he said. “Will it be a carbon copy of what they’re flying now that’s talking to the UHF S-band on our Tranche 2 Beta birds or will it be a different S-band wave form?”

As for the missile warning and tracking layer, Tournear said Tranche 3 will work toward getting the number of satellites necessary to detect and track high-speed missiles from space.

Across Tranche 1 and Tranche 2, SDA has contracted vendors for 82 satellites in its tracking layer. While the baseline plan for Tranche 3 has been around 54 satellites, the exact number of payloads will be determined as the department decides how much money to allocate to the program over the next couple of months.

A force design conducted by the Space Warfighting Analysis Center found that the Space Force would need around 135 tracking satellites in LEO for its missile warning and tracking mission, Tournear noted.

Right now, the agency is focused on getting to at least 100 tracking satellites in orbit to achieve the resiliency it needs, he added. The difference between that number and the overall goal of 135 is “assumptions in specific designs,” he said.

“It’s going to be continuing to build out off of Tranche 2 tracking and get towards that number of 100 satellites in the total LEO tracking constellation, adding in more of those missile defense satellites as we go to make sure that we have enough coverage for the missile defense mission by the 2030 time frame,” Tournear said.

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