The U.S. Space Force’s Space Development Agency (SDA) has awarded contracts to Northrop Grumman [NOC] and Lockheed Martin [LMT] for 72 Tranche 2, Transport Layer-Beta satellites and expects to award a contract soon to another vendor for more than a dozen T2TL-Beta satellites, SDA Director Derek Tournear said on Dec. 7.
“We are looking at putting another approximately 18 satellites on contract, and we’re working with a third vendor to do that, and we should make that announcement shortly,” he told a National Security Space Association (NSSA) virtual forum.
The contract award would satisfy SDA’s plan for 90 T2TL-Beta satellites that are to transmit over Ultra High Frequency S-band for tactical satellite communications.
SDA had planned on 44 T2TL-Gamma satellites with advanced tactical data links, but Tournear told Silicon Valley Space Week’s Milsat Symposium in October that the requirement is now 24 Gamma satellites, as SDA is in discussions with the third, possible T2TL-Beta vendor to put the advanced tactical data link on 20 additional Beta satellites (Defense Daily, Oct. 30).
The earlier T2TL-Alpha satellites are to transmit beyond line-of-sight Link 16 data to military forces from space, while T2TL-Beta satellites are to transmit over Ultra High Frequency S-band for tactical satellite communications.
T2TL satellites, which are to begin launches in September 2026, are to have three optical communications terminals (OCTs), and the Gamma satellites are to add a fourth OCT and a classified “Warlock mission payload,” SDA has said. The T2TL-Gamma satellites are to launch by June 1, 2027.
The agency said that it expects to issue the T2TL-Gamma solicitation by the end of this year (Defense Daily, Dec 5). Tranche 2 is to have about 270 Transport and Tracking Layer satellites. The SDA Transport Layer satellites are to provide rapid sensor to shooter data, while the Tracking Layer satellites are to advance detection and tracking of hypersonic and ballistic missiles.
SDA has said that the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture of hundreds of satellites at 1,000 km altitude in low Earth orbit (LEO) will, due to sheer scale and distance, prevent advanced adversaries’ expensive weapons, such as direct ascent anti-satellite missiles and directed energy, from shutting down DoD’s future LEO communications grid.
“The only real threats I’m worried about are the common mode failures, and the two common mode failures that I’m most concerned about are, number one, cyber and, number two, supply chain, and that’s supply chain interdiction to make sure that there’s nothing that’s happened to various vendors in our supply chain and making sure that the supply chain is healthy enough to maintain the production capability,” Tournear said on Dec. 7. “We have a lot of vendors in place for cyber protection…We red team all of our software design for our spacecraft and our ground vendors through the National Cyber Range.”
The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has yet to approve SDA’s request to broadcast Link 16 from space into U.S. airspace, but SDA has received a waiver from the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) to transmit to a Five Eyes nation (Defense Daily, Nov. 29). The SDA said this is a “compromise position” and the agency still has a requirement to test over U.S. air space.
U.S., NATO, and coalition forces have used Link 16 on Earth to transmit and exchange current situational awareness data.
“Our friends at the FAA, their primary concern is to make sure that there is zero possibility of risk for commercial air traffic,” Tournear said on Dec. 7. “Link 16 shares some [frequency] bands with some of the navigation aids used for commercial aircraft. FAA and the DoD have come to agreements on what DoD needs to demonstrate to be able to operate Link 16 over the national airspace. FAA has been helping us come up with those agreements. DoD now has to go through a certification process on any new radio, and that’s where there’s a little bit of rub, but we’re working through that. Any new radio means any small change, even a software change on the radio. [DoD has to] go through this certification process, which the Navy owns, validate that, and then the FAA says, once that gets done, they’ll get us approval very quickly to do testing over the national airspace.”
“On the DoD side, we have not completed that testing for our radios on orbit yet, ” he said. “We’re in the process of doing that. We expect to get those tests completed very quickly, and then the FAA will allow us to have a temporary frequency authorization over the national airspace.”
On Nov. 28, SDA said that it demonstrated space to ground Link 16 connection from three York Space Systems‘ Tranche 0, Transport Layer satellites by using the territory of a non-U.S. Five Eyes nation. The other countries in Five Eyes are the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.
The York Space Systems’ Tranche 0, Transport Layer satellites and the Lockheed Martin [LMT] Tranche 0, Transport Layer satellites now in LEO “are flying different radios,” Tournear said.
“We have approval for the York satellites to operate those [their radios] over this Five Eye partner and international waters, but we have not yet got approval through NTIA for the radio that’s on the Lockheed satellites,” he said.