Key Space Force satellites can’t talk to each other, likely requiring $1B solution: Sources

WASHINGTON — The Space Force’s multibillion-dollar effort to build a satellite network that rapidly moves data over high-speed laser links will require an entirely new set of satellites and significant extra funding to connect with other military space systems, Breaking Defense has learned. 

In effect, this new group of satellites will serve as translators between different sets of optical waveforms — two or three missile warning/tracking constellations in the short term, and others in the future —  in order to ensure multiple systems can talk to each other. That connectivity is a vital part of supporting Trump administration’s Golden Dome missile defense initiative that the network is supposed to help speed into existence, multiple sources said. 

The Space Force plans to orbit an “operational prototype” of the Space Data Network Backbone being built by SpaceX by 2027. The large constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit (LEO) that will serve as the data backhaul layer — essentially, the central communications traffic router — of the service’s planned SDN architecture, a space-based network of networks designed to connect sensors to shooters. 

The Space Force envisions the SDN as a hybrid constellation comprising military and commercial communications satellites that eventually will be able to share data across missions,  including missile warning, tracking and targeting as well as both air- and ground-moving target indication. As a top priority, the SDN will focus on connecting to the Space Development Agency’s (SDA) Tracking Layer satellites for detecting and tracking missiles to be stationed in LEO and Space System Command’s (SSC) similar Resilient Missile Warning and Tracking- Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) birds. 

SpaceX won a $2.29 billion contract in May to fast-track development of the SDN Backbone to meet President Donald Trump’s 2028 deadline for implementing Golden Dome. The Space Force has not publicly disclosed how many satellites the backbone will include, but the effort is a restructured version of the earlier MILNET constellation, which a Space Force official said last year would comprise more than 480 satellites.

The SDN Backbone’s central feature is the use of lasers for satellite-to-satellite communications. Laser links, which function via optical communications terminals (OCT) on board satellites, allow the transmission of bigger volumes of data faster and more securely than the radio frequency links carried by traditional communications satellites. 

However, SpaceX is using proprietary OCTs on the SDN Backbone satellites, dubbed by the company as “Plasers,” that cannot directly exchange data with those equipping both the SDA and SSC missile warning/tracking satellites, according to multiple industry, former government and current Space Force sources. To complicate matters, these sources said, the OCTs used by SDA and SSC also are incompatible. 

To address this lack of connectivity, the Space Force is considering a constellation of 12 to 13 additional satellites that could allow otherwise incompatible OCT payloads to exchange data, two industry sources and one former Space Force official said.

The proposed satellites, known as Space Exchange Points (SEPs) or “translator satellites,” are expected to cost somewhere $12-14 million each, these sources said — a total of roughly $1 billion in new money that will need to be found at a time the Pentagon is expected to get less funding than it asked for from Congress.

Even aside from the extra costs, however, several sources expressed frustration with the situation with regard to the Space Force’s two new missile warning/tracking constellations, saying it could have been avoided had the Pentagon focused on standardization at an earlier date. Instead, the service is now having to scramble to fix a problem that, the sources emphasized, never needed to happen. 

An SSC spokesperson declined to comment on the compatibility of its MEO birds with SDA’s LEO satellites or SpaceX’s Plaser; and also declined to comment on the SEP program’s end goals and projected costs.  SpaceX did not respond to a detailed inquiry from Breaking Defense. 

Different Standards Block Connectivity 

The crux of the connectivity problem is that the SpaceX, SDA and SSC OCTs are based on different technical standards governing the precise optical waveforms used, and thus how many gigabits of data per second the laser links can transmit, sources explained.

Part of the reason for the standards mismatch is the decision made some time in 2025 by the Department of the Air Force to flip from using SDA’s Transport Layer of data relay satellites as the SDN backbone to instead relying on SpaceX’s constellation — at the time dubbed MILNET and already in use by the National Reconnaissance Office. By that time, SDA already had been developing both the Transport Layer and the Tracking Layer satellites based on its own open-source OCT standard, a first version of which was published in 2022.

“The optical waveform/terminals on SDA’s Transport Layer and Tracking Layer satellites, which carry the SDA OCT Standard, are not directly compatible with the Plaser waveform,” an SDA official confirmed.

The disconnect between SDA and SSC on OCTs is harder to justify, one former Pentagon official said, given that both developmental programs began at roughly the same time in 2019 — and thus could have worked together to develop compatible OCTs. However, one industry source said, a possible argument for the differences is that SDA has been focused on developing OCTs optimized for its LEO-based satellites, whereas SSC is concentrating on operations in MEO where satellites are farther from the Earth and farther from each other than in LEO.

The Space Force is not unaware of the challenge it faces. G.P. Sandhoo, head of both SDA and the Space Force’s new Missile Warning and Tracking Portfolio Acquisition Executive office, on Oct. 28 told a panel at Silicon Valley Space Week conference in Mountain View, Calif., that his shop will eventually need to figure out how to integrate data from sensors carried by satellites in different orbits, according to an article in Space News. 

Translator Sats To The Rescue? 

SSC has been working on developing its OCTs, called Enterprise Space Terminals (ESTs), since 2024. At the time, the command described the program as designed “to operationalize a new enterprise waveform designed to communicate in the Beyond Low Earth Orbit (bLEO) regimes,” and estimated it would cost a total of $100 million. 

This April, General Atomics and CACI announced they had won Phase 3 awards to develop the EST terminals for “flight hardware” production and demonstration, but provided few other details. And in July, SSC awarded California-based startup K2 Space $22.9 million to host tests of two ESTs on two of its Gravitas satellites.

An SSC spokesperson declined to comment on the technical details of the ESTs, saying only that the “EST payload implements a government owned optical communications standard designed for both long- and short-range communications.” 

However, the spokesperson confirmed that prototype ESTs are being designed to equip the future SEP translator satellites 

SSC initiated the SEP program on Aug. 13 with awards to five companies worth $12 million each — Amazon LEO for Government, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Rocket Lab and York Space System — to build prototypes. The SEP birds are “specialized spacecraft [that] act as orbital routers, allowing disparate networks and government satellite systems to connect directly” to the SDN backbone, the SSC release said. 

To do that, the SSC spokesperson said, the SEP “host vehicles” being built by each of the contractors will be “integrated with” the SDN Backbone — implying that they will be equipped with the SpaceX Plaser — and also will carry the ESTs. 

“The five vendors will demonstrate their ability to directly connect their host satellite and associated C2 systems to the existing SDN Backbone architecture; ground-to-ground, ground-to-space, then space-to-space,” the SSC spokesperson added. “Each vendor has their own demonstration schedule and we are planning for demonstrations next calendar year.”

However, the spokesperson declined to comment when specifically asked whether the SEP satellites will be equipped with the Plaser. They also declined to specify whether the government had bought those terminals from SpaceX for the SEP prototypes, or whether each vendor instead was required to do so. 

(SpaceX in 2024 said it intended to sell a miniature version of the Plaser to allow third party satellites to connect to Starlink, but it is unclear if any such deals have been made — Muon Space in September 2025 announced a “partnership” to equip its Halo birds with the mini-Plaser but did not specify terms.)

The SSC spokesperson noted that the SEP spacecraft vendors also are working with the EST contractors “to define the interface necessary to host their payloads,” stressing that while the contracts are separate the efforts are complementary.

“Combining these host spacecraft and optical payload elements together, a SEP will allow any external Government system carrying a compatible optical terminal to connect to the SDN Backbone,” the spokesperson said.

The spokesperson did not, however, provide any information about the SEP constellation’s ultimate size, costs and schedule for deployment. 

The concept of a translator satellite is not a new idea. SDA in 2022 was working on the idea to allow data from commercial satellites eventually to flow into the Transport Layer. But questions remain about how difficult it will be to implement.

“Reasonable people will disagree on how difficult it is,” one former Space Force official said. “[T]he technical challenges from the hardware side are pretty straightforward. … But there is some networking translation that has to happen in addition to just the hardware configuration.”

In addition, the official said, the SEP satellites as currently designed are not compatible with either SDA’s Tracking Layer satellites or the Transport Layer, which is being transferred to SSC for further development as a separate so-called enclave of the SDN specifically focused on connecting to legacy military platforms such as fighter jets. 

Which raises the question of whether yet more development and funds will be needed.

SDA now is projecting to begin launch of its first operational Tracking Layer satellites, called Tranche 1, next spring, according to a recent article in Space News, representing a two-year delay. Those Tranche 1 birds are to be followed by two more satellite sets,Tranche 2 and 3, each being designed with improved capabilities. The agency has been projecting Tranche 2 launches to begin in December and initial Tranche 3 launches to start in 2029, but given the delay in Tranche 1 that schedule is now unclear. 

As for the Transport Layer, the shift of the program to SSC has thrown the program’s scope, schedule and funding up in the air. The Pentagon’s 2027 budget request shows funding continuing for the Transport Layer’s first two tranches, but no funding for SDA’s earlier planned Tranche 3 and beyond.