The first of 12 planned military satellites is now fully operational within less than a week of its launch, a top Space Development Agency (SDA) official announced today after he said the defense agency sent the spacecraft, dubbed Dragoon, into orbit on Monday.
Dragoon was built by York Space Systems and was launched into space aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It is part of the SDA’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) Tranche 1 – part of a larger mega constellation effort the agency has been working toward that would send hundreds of interconnected satellites into orbit to serve multiple defense purposes.
SDA Director Derek Tournear explained at the Defense One Tech Summit in Arlington, Va., that Dragoon will validate the York satellite bus ahead of this summer’s Tranche 1 launches and demonstrate tactical SATCOM payloads for Tranche 2 Beta.
The mission proved the bus design works and tested UHF and S-band communications for direct warfighter support.
“When you launch a satellite, you first start off in kind of a safe mode, because you know you never know how long it’s going to take to [make] contact with it,” Tournear said, noting that Dragoon reached full operational status by Thursday – just days after launch – compared to the four months it took Tranche Zero.
“This is why I’m such a believer in this spiral development model, where you where you launch, learn while you’re building the next ones, and you just continue to do that,” he said. “I’m excited to see it up there, excited to see it working, and even more excited to see Tranche One launching later this summer.”
In addition to quicker times getting satellites online, Tournear said SDA is dramatically accelerating acquisition timelines, cutting order-to-orbit cycles from the traditional eight years to just 27-40 months for Tranche Zero.
While it has been aiming for two-year iterations – also known as tranches – of satellites and related systems each year, the agency is currently hitting 30-month intervals, he explained, though he noted faster contracting timelines of 110 days from solicitation to award.
Eventually, SDA wants the satellite network to be autonomous and self-healing, explained Tournear, who said they are starting with ground-managed operations and progressing to full on-orbit processing for faster speeds and resiliency.
The goal – he said – is to enable real-time data fusion and AI-driven decision-making in space which would reduce reliance on ground systems and maximize bandwidth efficiency.
“You’ll hear a lot of people that push back,” said Tournear, saying they have “a good point on size, weight, and power” which combined are a “big constraint.”
“How are you going to put [a data center] into a satellite that’s a few 100 kilograms? It’s true. You’re not going to do that … You don’t need the elephant all in one bite,” he said.
“If you look at … the compute power that’s in your cell phone – 20 years ago, imagine the amount of … power that was required to give you that same compute power,” he explained. “And that’s what we’re capitalizing off of to be able to bring this to bear in space.”
Tournear said that while full autonomous in-orbit operations aren’t expected until 2027, SDA plans to gradually phase in on-orbit app-based capabilities developed via an “app factor” to enable automated network management, data fusion, and dissemination.