SDA National Defense Space Architecture

WASHINGTON: Combatant Commanders have given an informal thumbs up to Space Development Agency plans to orbit an initial 150 or so satellites by the end of 2024 as the central communications network for Joint All Domain Command and Control (JADC2), John London, chief of SDA’s Warfighter Integration Cell, says.

SDA’s Transport Layer constellation, when completed, will comprise 300 to 500 satellites and form the “backbone” communications network that eventually all DoD C2 systems will link into — as ordered this past May by former Defense Secretary Mark Esper.

Two-star (and even an odd three-star) officers from all 11 Combatant Commands — as well as Joint Staff officers, and representatives from the military services and DoD agencies including the NRO — yesterday participated in SDA’s biannual Warfighter Council meeting, London told me in an interview today.

He noted that the it was by far the largest turnout for the meetings, which started in 2019 almost as soon as SDA itself stood up. On the agenda were SDA’s current plans to begin launching its so-called Tranche 0 demonstration satellites by 2022, and its Tranche 1 of another approximately 150 data relay satellites by the end of 2024.

“We were surprised it went so smoothly, and there was such a strong concurrence on the part of the warfighter community,” London said. He credited the efforts of working-level theater command staff who participate in SDA’s “warfighter working groups” in ensuring that any concerns from senior leaders were essentially hashed out before today’s principals meeting.

Representatives of the Joint Staff, which is charged with the development of the JADC2 strategy as well as the emerging Joint Warfighting Concept that will lay out how US commanders will fight in future all-domain wars, have been particularly active at all the meetings, he added, including the one yesterday.

“We absolutely had representation in the room at the flag officer level. And we also had action officers that were tied in and that we typically work with on a day to day basis,” he said. “The Joint Staff has been great. I mean, they really have been extremely engaged at the action officer level, they’re always present.”

“And they’re always very vocal,” he went on. “At the risk of a double negative, we never do not hear from them. We hear we hear from a lot. So, it’s good, it’s very positive, and they’ve been extremely supportive of what we’re doing, and helpful, and have guided some of the things we’ve been doing as part of the warfighter working groups.”

London explained that SDA is pioneering a process whereby the eventual users of its emerging, seven-layer National Defense Space Architecture have constant input into the development of capabilities. They also will be able to (at least virtually) “sit side-by-side, elbow-to-elbow with the SDA test team” as the various satellite ‘layers’ — i.e. pieces of the overall constellations — are put through their paces.

The process also is serving, at least informally, as a two-way channel between the Joint Staff and SDA to ensure that the agency’s plans are fitting in with the emerging JADC2 strategy, he explained.

At the moment, SDA’s work is concentrated on the Tranche 0 demo, which includes 20 Transport Layer satellites for porting data to users and the 10 Tracking Layer missile warning and tracking sats. With Tranche 0, SDA hopes to demonstrate the constellations basics: the capability for the satellites to ‘talk to’ ground stations and each other; and for the Tracking Layer to find and follow missile tracks.

The Warfighter Council meeting’s approval is in essence a starter gun for the follow-on Tranche 1. (Tranche 1 will comprise only Transport Layer satellites because that is all the agency has funding approval for at the moment.) London confirmed that SDA’s plan is still to issue a request for proposals (RFP) to industry in the late August timeframe, with the competition wide open to any firm that wants to take a shot. The next Warfighter Council meeting, not coincidentally, will take place just prior to that RFP.

Those 150 Transport Layer satellites will provide “initial warfighting capability” for communications, SDA Director Derek Tournear told the Small Satellite Alliance in February.

What that means, Tournear explained to me in a February interview, is that “we have persistent coverage over a given region.”

This requires having enough satellites to cover the globe with their orbits, which means that in principle a user anywhere could connect to at least one satellite sometime, he elaborated. But because the SDA’s planned satellites are small, they don’t have enough power to actually stay turned on during their entire circle around the Earth. Therefore, the Tranche 1 network can only provide 24/7 connection to operators over a limited geographic region.

“I need to choose the region on where I want to turn my satellites on to have persistence,” he said. With Tranche 1, operators will be able to decide “on the fly” which region they want the satellites to serve. “If for one week, I want to have persistence over me in the Indo-Pacom region, I can do that. And then, if I need to shift that and have persistence over Europe, I can shift.”

SDA awarded Lockheed Martin and newcomer York Space Systems contracts to build 10 data relay satellites each for the Transport Layer’s Tranche 0, all of which are to be on orbit by 2023. Lockheed Martin’s contract is worth $187.5 million; York’s is worth $94 million.

In October, the agency awarded SpaceX $149 million and L3Harris $194 million to each build four satellites for the agency’s Tracking Layer Tranche 0. And the Missile Defense Agency awarded L3Harris and Northrop Grumman contracts to each develop a prototype satellite to carry the medium field of view Hypersonic and Ballistic Space Sensor (HBTSS) for the Tracking Layer. L3Harris’s contract worth $121 million was awarded on Jan. 14; and Northrop Grumman’s $155 million on Jan. 22. Those satellites also are all expected to be on orbit by 2023.