SDA Awards $3.5B in Tranche 3 Tracking Layer Contracts (Image Credit: Payload)
The Space Development Agency awarded $3.5B in contracts on Friday to continue building the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA)—-a missile-tracking, military-supporting, multi-layer constellation that’s been several years in the making.
The contracts are for the third tranche for the constellation’s Tracking Layer, which is responsible for all sensing from space. Each of the companies are responsible for delivering 18 satellites for a grand total of 72 in the tranche.
Drumroll, please…the awardees are:
- Lockheed Martin ($LMT) with a $1.1B award
- Rocket Lab ($RKLB) with an $805M award
- Northrop Grumman ($NOC) with a $764M award
- L3Harris ($LHX) with an $843M award
These are all firm, fixed-price contracts, in line with the SDA’s contracting strategy to date for the PWSA.
“The addition of these satellites will achieve near-continuous global coverage for missile warning and tracking, along with payloads capable of generating fire control quality tracks for missile defense,” acting director of the SDA, Gurpartap Sandhoo, said in a release. “This is a prime example of spiral development: the ability to rapidly integrate the next generation of technologies, and to proliferate the most impactful capabilities for increased capacity and lethality.”
Move as a pack: The awardees for this step of the program are familiar names, and they’ve all been part of the PWSA before.
- L3Harris has participated in every tranche of the Tracking Layer so far.
- Northrop built satellites for tranche 1 of Tracking, as well as tranche 1 and 2 of Transport, which is responsible for transmitting the data collected by tracking across the PWSA and back down to Earth.
- Lockheed Martin won contracts for tranche 2 of Tracking and all three tranches of Transport awarded so far.
- Rocket Lab is new to the Tracking layer, but it was part of tranche 2 of Transport.
Sierra Space, which is building satellites for tranche 2 of Tracking, is absent from the list of winners this time around.
The state of deployment: The SDA is actively working on sending batches of satellites into space to make up the PWSA, but these contracts are part of a long-term strategy. So far, all of tranche 0 for both Transport and Tracking has been deployed, as well as part of tranche 1 of Transport. Launches will continue for Tranche 1 throughout 2026 and 2027, and initial warfighting capability is expected in 2027.
As for tranches 2 and 3, the agency is looking further ahead. The contractors for tranche 2 are working on those satellites, and the newly-awarded tranche 3 contracts are expected to launch no earlier than 2029.
