“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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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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