Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC) will build 38 Alpha satellites for the second tranche of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture’s transport layer under a potential $732 million contract with the Space Development Agency.
The company said Monday the contract covers five years of satellite operations and sustainment services and support for associated ground elements.
According to SDA, the PWSA Tranche 2 Transport Layer Alpha satellites in low Earth orbit will deliver global communications capability and persistent, encrypted connectivity to warfighters to support missile warning and tracking and beyond-line-of-sight targeting missions.
The agency expects the T2TL-Alpha constellation’s first orbital plane to launch no later than September 2026.
“The T2TL Alpha awards demonstrate our forward momentum in the procurement phase for Tranche 2 of the PWSA to support delivery beginning in 2026,” said SDA Director Derek Tournear.
“With the Beta variant and now the Alpha constellation, we’ll have more than 170 T2TL satellites on order,” added Tournear, a previous Wash100 awardee.
SDA stated that it expects to issue a solicitation for the T2TL Gamma satellites later in 2023.
The latest award came a week after it was announced that York Space Systems secured a potential $617 million contract to build 62 T2TL Alpha satellites.
The contract with Northrop brings the total value of other transaction authority agreements awarded by SDA for the development of 100 Alpha satellites to approximately $1.3 billion.
In August, Northrop and Lockheed Martin (NYSE: LMT) received $1.5 billion in prototype agreements to develop and operate 72 T2TL Beta satellites.
Northrop is also building 42 satellites for the first tranche of the Transport Layer through a prototype agreement awarded in February 2022.
