SDA Posts Draft Solicitation for Tranche 2 Transport Layer Program

The Space Development Agency has released a draft solicitation for the development of space vehicles, payloads and ground systems for the second tranche of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture.

A notice posted Tuesday on SAM.gov states that the Tranche 2 Transport Layer program will include three optical communication terminals; Ka-band mission payload; S-band backup telemetry, tracking and control system; and payloads for networking and data routing and navigation.

SDA plans to use a multi-solicitation and multi-vendor acquisition approach for the T2TL-Beta program. Interested vendors have until March 1 to provide feedback on the preliminary solicitation documents.

T2TL spacecraft will be similar to platforms being developed for the first tranches of the PWSA’s transport layer and development and experimentation system.

The agency expects the first plane of T2TL space vehicles to deploy to low Earth orbit in September 2026.

SDA renamed the National Defense Space Architecture as the PWSA in late January to better reflect the agency’s mission to provide space-based warfighting capabilities.

Ball Aerospace develops a set of 10 experimental space vehicles and ground systems that will be used to test T1TL control infrastructure under a $176 million contract.