The first set of operational satellites in the Space Development Agency’s future orbital network will be launched about six months late, as suppliers have struggled to meet the Pentagon’s timeline.
Satellites in “Tranche 1” of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, a layered network of hundreds of military satellites in low-Earth orbit, were supposed to begin launching in September, but will be delayed to March or April, said Derek Tournear, director of the Space Development Agency.
Manufacturers were “a little optimistic” in their initial assessments, and haven’t been able to reach the production levels necessary on components such as optical terminals, Tournear said at a Mitchell Institute event today. However, the agency will still hit its goal to launch within two years of Tranche 0, he said. Tranche 0, which comprised demonstration satellites for PWSA, began launching in April 2023 after a six-month delay due to COVID-related supply chain problems.
“It’s clear that a lot of the subcontractors, they weren’t able to scale up as quickly as they had, and we’ve been working very closely with them. We have put contracts in place with some of those subcontractors to help incentivize them, to build them up. We’ve gotten involved with them and helped to try to build up their processes, as well as the primes. Some of the primes have sent people to their subcontractors on site to help build them up,” Tournear said.
But despite initial supply chain woes, industry is starting to reach the right production pace, Tournear said. And the agency is looking at other ways to get back on track going forward, he said, noting SpaceX’s rapid launch cadence.
“We know SpaceX can launch faster than once a month, so we can bring this in. The space vehicles will be ready faster than that once we start the initial launching, but it’s just a matter of how fast will it take us to get through launch and early operations and pull that in,” Tournear said.
The plan for Tranche 1 is to launch once a month for 10 months, he said. SDA will launch 300 to 400 satellites over the next few years in Tranche 1 and 2.
For Tranche 3, industry will need to develop some new capabilities, Tournear previewed—including satellites that can track and defend against missiles.
“We really want industry to tell us the state-of-the-art and the state of manufacturing readiness for a combined missile tracking-missile defense satellite,” he said.
The U.S. already has a constellation of satellites for missile warning and tracking, which detects launches and follows weapons as they maneuver. Now, SDA wants new missile tracking satellites that can direct interceptors as well, Tournear said.
“Defense takes that one step further, and says not only can we detect maneuvering missiles, we can detect them to such accuracy that I can send that data down to an interceptor with no other sensors needed,” he said.
Tournear’s agency is already working on programs to address advanced missile threats, like the FOO Fighter program and the “Gamma variant” of the Tranche 2 transport layer, but those follow a different class of targets than the missile tracking-missile defense architecture in Tranche 3, Tournear said, without disclosing the specific threats each program will address.
The agency aims to launch nine satellites that can do both missile tracking and missile defense, in addition to 40 or 45 satellites focused just on missile tracking, Tournear said. In total, Tranche 3 will put about 200 satellites in the constellation.
Because these satellites are only built with a five-year life span, Tournear said, Tranche 3 satellites will be the first tranche to replace other satellites being decommissioned, in addition to fielding new capabilities.
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