Starlink · Pentagon · SpaceX · US Congress · Donald Trump · Ars Technica
The Pentagon's Space Development Agency hasn't moved as fast as anyone would like
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The Space Development Agency was established in 2019 to help speed up the deployment of US military space systems by sidestepping the Pentagon’s traditional sluggish bureaucracy.
Key facts
- SDA has ordered 108 satellites in the Tranche 3 tracking layer due to start launching in 2028
- Seven more launches will complete Tranche with 63 additional data transport satellites and 28 missile tracking satellites manufactured by Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and L3Harris
- In all, SDA’s Tranche 1 constellation will number 154 operational satellites when complete
- Some of the satellites encountered thermal control and propulsion system problems as they climbed from their insertion orbit to an operational altitude of more than 600 miles (1,000 kilometers)
Summary
Seven years later, SDA is finally launching its first batches of operational satellites, as the Pentagon plans to shutter the semi-autonomous agency and fold it back into the Space Force’s procurement pipeline, newly reorganized under several program acquisition executives in a bid to streamline weapons buying. SDA’s fate is not a surprise, and lawmakers in both houses of Congress have backed the agency’s closure in drafts of this year’s National Defense Authorization Act. The Space Development Agency’s primary mission has been to develop a constellation of several hundred missile warning and data relay satellites in low-Earth orbit designed to detect, track, and target ballistic and hypersonic missiles. The idea was to rapidly procure, develop, and field new generations, or tranches, of tracking and data “transport” satellites every two years.