The Space Development Agency (SDA) plans for a major acquisition push in fiscal year (FY) 2025 and is pursuing the procurement of nearly 200 satellites for Tranche 3 of its low-Earth orbit megaconstellation.
In an Oct. 2 notice to industry, SDA announced that in the first quarter of fiscal year FY2025 (ending Dec. 31) it plans to release solicitations for integration work on Tranche 3 of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) constellation.
The PWSA serves as the backbone of the Pentagon’s joint all-domain command and control strategy – the Department of Defense’s concept to connect sensors and communications from all the military services into a unified network. This satellite constellation aims to provide crucial data transport alongside missile warning and tracking capabilities, enabling seamless connections between sensors and military assets worldwide.
General Dynamics has already received contracts for ground operations and integration for Tranches 1 and 2.
“SDA’s Tranche 3 programs will provide sustained capability with advanced improvements over Tranche 2 plus future warfighting applications,” the notice reads.
Key improvements will include enhanced missile warning, tracking, and defense capabilities with better coverage, sensitivity, and accuracy; increased coverage, resilience, and capacity of tactical data links; improved resilience and accuracy in Positioning, Navigation, and Timing solutions, along with better distribution to users; and greater mission and network management performance, bolstered by autonomous systems.
For instance, the Tranche 3 Transport Layer aims to advance the PWSA’s data transport and navigation capabilities with mission-specific variants that each serve multiple capabilities. Tranche 3 Transport Layer will support the advancement of the PWSA’s tracking capabilities by adding capacity and robustness to the global mesh network.
Much like in Tranche 1 and 2, SDA will maintain a three-pronged approach for its Transport satellites in Tranche 3, featuring three distinct groups: Upsilon, Sigma, and Lambda. Each group will offer varying levels of capabilities.
SDA is also contemplating a PWSA Enterprise Ground effort, but details – including timeline – are still under development. According to the notice, SDA intends to update this announcement with that information “when available and appropriate.”
Tranche 3 is scheduled to start launching in late 2028 and will be the first to replace earlier PWSA satellites with refreshed and improved capabilities.
Additional details will be available upon request in a Controlled Unclassified Information (CUI) package, which includes a graphical summary of the planned Tranche 3 architecture and payload configurations for each vehicle type.
Interested parties should respond to the notice by Nov. 1 at 12pm EDT.
