July was a busy month for the Space Development Agency.

After a months-long pause, the organization launched its latest batch of satellites fixing a number of issues with the first 42 Tranche 1 Transport Layer satellites by York Space Systems and Lockheed Martin, which were launched in September and October 2025.

The Space Force agency’s primary mission is to deliver a proliferated constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit to support military operations from space. The Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture represents a departure from traditional military satellite architectures, replacing a small number of large, exquisite satellites with a network of smaller and cheaper ones.

SDA has embraced a spiral development model that introduces new generations of satellite space-based technologies roughly every two years, allowing the agency to rapidly incorporate new technologies and respond to evolving threats.

The agency first deployed transport and missile warning and tracking satellites as part of Tranche 0 — a demonstration effort that laid the foundation for the PWSA architecture. The agency is now flying 27 satellites in Tranche 0. And as Tranche 0 satellites were flying, Tranche 1 satellites were already in production.

Strategic satellite reset

Last year, the agency launched the first group of Tranche 1 satellites but had to take a “strategic pause” due to some hardware and software issues it encountered once those satellites were on orbit.

“We learned a lot of things when we started launching Tranche 1. There are two different vendors, so there are challenges that are unique to each vendor that they are learning. There are challenges that are crosscutting about how to do test and checkout, early operations on 21 satellites at a time. You’re really treating them as a network. A former leader at SDA used to say these are cattle, not pets. So you can’t treat them as individuals,” Jennifer Elzea, SDA’s director of strategic engagement, explained during Federal News Network’s Space & Satellite Exchange 2026.

“Even though an individual satellite might have a problem that we need to work out or a challenge that we need to solve, we need to pay attention to the health of the network and the ability of the network to come online and do the operations as an architecture.”

Following months of troubleshooting, the agency launched another 21 Tranche 1 satellites on July 16 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base.

“We are optimistic that going forward, we’ll be able to move much more quickly from launch through test and check out, orbit raising, and then into early ops and transferring to that operations center,” Elzea said.

Launch often but also when ready

Initially, the agency wanted to conduct about one launch per month, but it has since shifted to a more flexible approach, launching satellites as they become ready.

“We have not locked ourselves into a specific cadence like that for the remainder of Tranche 1, but we do plan to launch them as they’re ready. It’s our hope to get a tracking one or two tracking launches of missile-warning, missile-tracking satellites potentially mixed in with the data transport so that we can start working on test and checkout for that tracking mission. But we will launch the satellites as they’re ready and get them up there,” Elzea said.

And as for Tranche 2, the agency plans to start launching those satellites in fiscal 2027.

“Tranche 2 is in the build stage, so the vendors that we put on contract or awarded almost a couple of years ago now, are through all of the design. They are in production for those space vehicles. We anticipate beginning to launch Tranche Two sometime next year. We’ll launch what’s ready when it’s ready in order to get things into that test and checkout process and ultimately online for operation,” Elzea said.

“Tranche 2 does have some enhancements in terms of technology, communication channels, processing, hardware and software enhancements over Tranche 1, but it’s an iterative change. It’s not a whole new space vehicle. It’s not a whole new system. It will represent some small changes but not a huge overhaul.”

Supporting Golden Dome

At the same time, SDA has become increasingly important to one of the Pentagon’s highest-profile initiatives: the Trump administration’s Golden Dome missile defense effort.

On July 14, the agency announced the award of two agreements worth nearly $1.75 billion. SDA will build 36 additional missile-tracking satellites in support of Golden Dome. These satellites will be part of the tracking layer for Tranche 3. The awards include 18 missile defense satellites and 18 missile-warning and -tracking satellites. The space vehicles are expected to be ready for launch by the end of 2028.

The agency returned to existing contractors to procure these additional satellites.

“They are very similar to some of the satellites, missile-warning, missile-tracking satellites that we bought in Tranche 2, so it’s not wholly new technology. These are essentially production buys from some of the contractors who are already building things for us in Tranche 2,” Elzea said. “The reason that we did it that way was because Golden Dome needed to move quickly, and we had a mechanism to do that by purchasing additional satellites from companies who are already building satellites for us in earlier generations. We’re able to enhance the missile-warning, missile-tracking, missile defense picture using this mechanism that we already had in place.”

She said SDA’s existing model made the agency a “good partner” for Golden Dome.

“We have a global focus. Ultimately, our constellation will look around the world. We will have sensing ultimately globally. Golden Dome’s focus is more homeland-specific, but some of the concepts that SDA was already using are very helpful, so that’s where you can see the birth of this particular collaboration.”

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