The Beta program for Tranche 2 of Space Development Agency’s Transport and Tracking Layer satellite program adds ultra-high frequency and S-band tactical SATCOM links to a set of user terminals. Northrop Grumman graphic.
Production for the Space Development Agency’s (SDA) Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA) constellation is in full swing, and Northrop Grumman is one of the primary contractors producing satellites for what will soon be a global constellation of missile defense and data transport satellites. SDA’s concept relies on mature technology available on the open market to field satellites two to three times faster than traditional military space programs.
We caught up with Louis Christen, senior director of programs at Northrop Grumman, who leads the company’s SDA programs, to talk about producing satellites at scale and what it’s like to move at SDA speed.
Breaking Defense: Bring us up to date on the work you’re doing with the SDA on the two tranches of Transport and Tracking Layer satellites.
Louis Christen is senior director of programs at Northrop Grumman, and leads the company’s SDA programs.
Christen: Overall, we’re now on contract for 132 satellites. There are 116 transport layer and 16 tracking layer satellites. For Tranche 1, which is the first generation we worked on, we’re well past critical design review (CDR) on both programs and we’re in the hardware build, assembly and test stage.
We added the Alpha and Beta programs for Tranche 2 last year. Both extend the PWSA mesh network and are part of the transport layer, but each has slightly different capabilities and different tactical datalinks.
Alpha is a product-line extension for the first-generation Transport Layer satellites. This program extends the constellation, working toward that global persistence that ultimately means more satellites overhead at any given time.
Beta is a new mission that adds ultra-high frequency (UHF) and S-band tactical SATCOM links to a specific set of user terminals. Both Alpha and Beta just passed the preliminary design review and we’re now heading into detailed design.
Breaking Defense: How else does Tranche 2 differ from Tranche 1?
Christen: The addition of the Beta satellites makes it quite a bit different. It extends the transport layer’s capabilities, adding a complex capability that requires the kind of mission engineering expertise Northrop Grumman brings to the table. We’ve been a leader in MILSATCOM for decades.
A specific example here is the Integrated Broadcast System (IBS), which is one of the payloads we’re hosting on Beta. It’s a UHF tactical datalink that provides threat warning, situational awareness, targeting and command and control data to warfighters. Adding this capability onto a lower-Earth-orbit constellation extends IBS to a proliferated global capability where it can touch any part of the globe at any point in time.
Breaking Defense: You’re on contract for many more satellites than you were last year. Tell us about the challenges associated with ramping up production.
Christen: In terms of people, we’ve got bench depth within our engineering community and Northrop Grumman has been able to scale up rapidly and keep pace with SDA’s timeline.
Managing the supply chain is the other critical part of that. These systems need to be fielded rapidly to meet a real mission need, and we’re helping SDA keep pace with the threat by partnering with suppliers that are ready to scale.
We know how to do this across our company. Managing a high-volume supply chain is something we do in other markets such as aeronautics systems, and we’ve been applying that skillset to the SDA programs.
Our bus and optical terminals are provided by Airbus U.S. Space & Defense and Mynaric, respectively. Airbus has more than 600 satellites on orbit built under OneWeb so that bus is well established and ready to scale.
And while we’re a highly capable provider of laser communications (lasercom) technology, for SDA we partnered with Mynaric because its focus was on a lower-cost terminal that can be produced at high rates. Mynaric has been a great partner on these SDA efforts.
Those are just two partners but across the portfolio we are working with a diverse set of traditional and non-traditional companies for smaller components.
Breaking Defense: Tell us more about the laser or optical communications aspect of these satellites.
Christen: The lasercom links are primarily inter-satellite, satellite-to-satellite, and they’re used to form a mesh in space. These links are very high bandwidth and lower latency in comparison to more traditional radio frequency links. It’s highly resilient to jamming because of the narrow beam widths; you’d have to physically interrupt the beam to jam it.
It’s a complex endeavor to field lasercom, but we have extensive experience designing and hosting lasercom terminals. We understand the space-vehicle constraints that are required to successfully host these systems and allow them to work in a dynamic space environment.
This is also an area we anticipated in our SDA work, and we invested in early demonstrations to drive down risk, including high-rate end-to-end lasercom link demonstrations and early interoperability testing between different terminals provided by other vendors to make sure that this is a successful part of the program overall. Making those investments early has helped us move forward at the pace we need to.
Breaking Defense: How is the SDA helping to foster the industrial base? In what ways does it support you on this program?
Christen: There’s a lot of competition among the smaller suppliers to get into these programs, which drives down costs and allows us to field more capability over time within budget constraints.
With a traditional program you would try to get the maximum capability from it and then see what the cost and schedule turn out to be. The SDA approach, in some cases, is to dial back the requirements and the capabilities for any particular tranche to a minimum viable product that can be fielded rapidly and within budget constraints — and ideally where the requirements can be satisfied by a larger set of suppliers.
This allows more competitors to have a shot at some of the lower-tier supply chain aspects and lets us field systems more rapidly because we’re using more mature products already invested in.
Breaking Defense: What have you learned so far working at the speed of “semper citius” – the SDA motto that means “always faster.”
Christen: The SDA set a rapid pace, and we’re keeping up and thriving in this environment. Our critical design reviews on Tranche 1 were completed in about 13 months, which is faster than traditional programs.
We’re just over two years into Tranche 1 and our flight hardware is hitting the shelves rapidly. We’re getting into production much quicker than you would see on normal space program time scales.
An important point here is that SDA didn’t just order a bunch of satellites and browbeat industry into moving fast; SDA has been a leader in setting the right conditions for industry to be successful.
I’ve worked on programs large and small, and what I can tell you is that not every mission is suited for SDA’s model. If our goal is to field a groundbreaking technology on a big ‘Class A’ satellite, this approach won’t work. Different contract structures and approaches enable the necessary, complex development on such programs to advance more efficiently.
However, SDA is acquiring these satellites with authorities that give us a greater degree of freedom in how we meet their requirements and is focusing on utilizing technology ready today. That’s been the secret sauce and they’ve put the acquisition timeline into overdrive.
I think what we at Northrop Grumman are showing is that with the right program structure and the right authorities, we’re able to move rapidly. I’m particularly proud of our team for rising to meet that challenge.
