Pentagon space arm awards $1.5 billion contract to Lockheed, Northrop for communications satellites

The Pentagon's Space Development Agency connected Monday awarded $1.5 cardinal successful contracts to Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman for prototype communications satellites.

SDA said the 72 satellites volition beryllium for the "Beta" variant of its Tranche 2 Transport Layer constellation, a web the U.S. subject is gathering to supply encrypted communications done a fleet of hundreds of satellites – which it calls the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture.

Lockheed and Northrop volition each physique 36 of the prototype satellites, scheduled to statesman launching by September 2026. Lockheed's declaration is worthy $816 million, and Northrop's is worthy $733 million. An SDA spokesperson told CNBC that the bureau received six proposals for the contract.

The Pentagon is progressively ambitious successful space, seeing a request to support up with China's increasing capabilities successful a domain that has wide ramifications for nationalist information efforts backmost connected Earth. The Space Force has particularly seen its fund grow, with $30 cardinal requested for fiscal twelvemonth 2024. Much of that backing goes to some defence contractors and abstraction companies providing products and work to the military.

The archetypal satellites of SDA's system launched successful April. Those "Tranche 0" satellites were the archetypal effort to show the feasibility of SDA's network.

In summation to communications, the SDA web aims to supply the U.S. subject with features specified arsenic rocket informing and tracking capabilities. SDA's web falls nether the Space Force's publication to the Department of Defense's Joint All-Domain Command and Control – a task to make a unified web crossed its subject branches.

SDA has antecedently awarded contracts to physique and run satellites successful its fleet to York Space, SpaceX, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and L3Harris.