“I am concerned about the transition of HBTSS from the Missile Defense Agency to the Space Development Agency. The apparent shift in strategy to deploy this capability does not reflect the urgency of the hypersonic threats we face,” Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo., chairman of the House Armed Service’s strategic forces subcommittee, told Breaking Defense.
By Theresa HitchensROC-X – The solution to organic precision strike capabilities
At AUSA Global Force 2024, IAI will present integrated, AI-driven combat systems – both manned and unmanned – that are opening new opportunities on the battlefield.
Tournear said today that there will be a total of 216 Transport Layer satellites orbited for what the agency calls its Tranche 2 configuration, which will begin launching in 2026.
By Theresa Hitchens
The 10 satellites, which will be lofted on a reusable SpaceX Falcon 9 from Vandenberg SFB to low Earth orbit (LEO), are the first batch of the Tranche 0 constellation, building blocks of America’s resilient space strategy.
By Theresa Hitchens The bulk of SDA’s FY24 request, some $4.1 billion, is in research, development, test and evaluation aimed at getting the first iterations of its planned satellites for both data relay, called the Transport Layer, and missile warning and tracking, called the Tracking Layer, into orbit.
By Theresa Hitchens
The new satellites will be integrated into SDA’s first operationally capable set of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites, called “Tranche 1,” the SDA spokesperson explained.
By Theresa Hitchens The name change for SDA’s seven-layer network of satellite and ground systems was approved by both Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall and space acquisition czar Frank Calvelli, and is designed to better reflect the network’s actual mission, SDA Director Derek Tournear told Breaking Defense.
By Theresa Hitchens
SDA already has a lot of interest from the Army and DoD’s testing community in its Space-Based Telemetry Monitoring, Electronic Support, and Alternative Navigation (SABRE) project.
By Theresa Hitchens
B-21, hypersonics and more: How digital development is driving industry innovation
Technological advancements are key to keeping pace with customer demands and evolving threat landscapes.
“SDA is considering signals different to GPS, but offered within the same frequency bands. If SDA’s military PNT service is located within the existing GPS frequency bands, it will minimize integration cost of new antenna systems on terrestrial weapon systems,” explained Jennifer Elzea, SDA spokesperson.
By Theresa Hitchens The on-board Battle Management, Command, Control and Communications (BMC3) software module will be tested on SDA’s Tranche 1 Transport Layer data relay satellites.
By Theresa Hitchens
Marc Bell, Terran Orbital’s CEO, told Breaking Defense that despite the decision to abandon plans for its PredaSAR subsidiary to operate a SAR-sat constellation, the company intends to fully uphold its obligations under a pair of contracts with NRO.
By Theresa Hitchens “Translator” payloads are necessary because many of today’s commercial remote sensing providers do not, and will not, have the ability to equip their satellites with optical inter-satellite links (OISLs) required to link to the agency’s Transport Layer birds, said SDA Director Derek Tournear.
By Theresa Hitchens
“We may say that we don’t want to, and we stand behind not doing, kinetic debris creating testing, but that does not mean that we should not have that capability,” said Mitchell Institute Senior Fellow for Spacepower Studies Tim Ryan.
By Theresa Hitchens SDA will decide next March whether the UHF- and SHF-band payloads being tested by T1DES should be integrated into its next iteration of Transport Layer data relay satellites.
By Theresa Hitchens
The side that can see and react to the battle will win the battle, so space-based sensors and communications layers are key, writes Tim Ryan of the Mitchell Institute.
By Tim Ryan