The Space Development Agency (SDA) last Friday released a new solicitation designed to give non-traditional defense contractors an opportunity to compete to provide satellites for on-orbit mission demonstrations and experimentation.
The Hybrid Acquisition for proliferated Low-earth Orbit (HALO) program will employ other transaction for prototype agreements through a staged competitive acquisition process that will create a pool of selected offerors who then compete for specific prototype orders under two Tranche 2 Demonstration and Experimentation (T2DES) variants and the Deimos mission.
The Deimos mission will involve a flight demonstration of a mission payload that can simultaneously do missile warning, missile tracking, and missile defense, “to include detection and tracking of traditional and advanced missiles, including hypersonic glide vehicles,” SDA says in the May 31 announcement posted on the government Sam.gov business opportunities site.
For the T2DES-Europa prototype, SDA plans to quicky buy the satellites to “prove the feasibility and scalability of more capable S-band waveforms,” the agency says. Under the T2DES-Titan mission, SDA will rapidly procure satellites “to prove the feasibility and scalability of optical communication translation satellites.”
SDA will stick with its typical firm-fixed price contracting approach for the low-Earth orbit HALO demonstrations.
Once prototype orders contracted, SDA plans to launch two identical satellites within 12 to 18 months. The program period of performance is three years.
The agency will host an industry day on June 17 in Northern Virginia that will include a virtual option. Offers are due by July 11.
“HALO will also increase the pool of performers capable of bidding on future SDA programs, including participation in layers of future tranches,” the agency said. “HALO will provide opportunities for companies to gain valuable experience working with SDA on demonstration projects.”
SDA is currently acquiring and launching a network of proliferated LEO satellites for missile warning and tracking, and related communications, as part of its Proliferated Warfighting Space Architecture.