In an exclusive interview with Breaking Defense, outgoing SDA Director Derek Tournear said the agency's three biggest technological successes have been proving the viability of space-based Link 16; missile tracking from LEO; and low-cost laser links.
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SDA originally had hoped to begin launching the Tranche 1 Transport and Tracking Layer constellations for its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture stationed in low Earth orbit in September 2024.
The Space Development Agency "has taken steps to develop laser communications technology but has not yet fully demonstrated it in space," finds a report released today by the Government Accountability Office.
Tournear said that the optical intersatellite link demonstration was final success in a trifecta of baseline challenges to SDA's plan to network hundreds of military satellites in LEO, as well as to eventually to integrate commercial satellites into the mix.
A new constellation with laser comms and compatibility with the Space Development Agency's Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture is now taking shape.
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Long-range, high-speed optical communications will be critical for the service's plans for a "hybrid architecture" that would see networks of old and new military satellites, as well as commercial and allied networks, all communicating seamlessly to shift vast quantities of data around the world in near real-time.
While SDA plans to use lasers to connect its hundreds of satellites in low Earth orbit to each other and to the ground, that technology remains in its infancy.
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.
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.
After manifesting 1,400 payloads aboard the ISS, Voyager is applying its mission management expertise to the next generation of space stations, ensuring uninterrupted mission readiness and success from the ground to space.
"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.
"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.
Mandrake 2's next trick, after demonstrating optical intersatellite links, will be using lasers for space-to-ground communications.
SpaceLink intends to put four data relay satellites in Medium Earth Orbit, to complement and backup the Space Development Agency's Transport Layer.