The Air Force is shifting its approach from one focused on proofs of concepts and experiments to one based on developing an operational architecture and model.
Derek Tournear
China is building up its space capabilities at an “incredible rate”—and it has done so by embracing needed principles the U.S. has historically been slow to adopt, top Space Force officials said. Speaking at the Mitchell Institute’s Spacepower Security Forum, both Vice Chief of Space ...
Having become a part of the Space Force this month, the Space Development Agency expects little disruption—so to speak—to getting its initial constellation into orbit in time for military exercises next summer, said SDA director Derek Tournear. He anticipated no personnel changes from the transition. ...
The Space Development Agency awarded L3Harris and Northrop Grumman Strategic Space Systems contracts to build Tranche 1 of the Tracking Layer for its planned National Defense Space Architecture, a multipurpose defense constellation. Each company will build 14 low-Earth-orbit satellites to detect and track the infrared ...
Detailed justification for the Space Force’s fiscal 2023 budget request revealed facility expansions for new radar and intercontinental ballistic missile programs and the breakdown of how the service would like to spend $1 billion on missile warning and tracking.
The Space Development Agency’s experimental Low Earth Orbit (LEO) data transport constellation will employ bleeding edge new technology in space when it starts to launch later this year. But down on the ground, SDA Director Derek M. Tournear told the Space Symposium April 6, the ...
A satellite constellation specially suited to tracking hypersonic missiles could be up and running by 2025. Director of the Space Development Agency Derek M. Tournear laid out the advantages of the Tracking Layer of SDA’s still-envisioned National Security Space Architecture in a virtual talk Jan. ...
The Biden Administration has economically sanctioned five individual North Koreans, a Russian national, and a Russian company in response to six missile tests conducted by Pyongyang since September, which the Administration says violate U.N. Security Council resolutions. The sanctions, which follow a Jan. 11 hypersonic ...
After one of the bidders lodged a protest the same day proposals were due for the Space Development Agency’s Tranche 1 Transport Layer earlier this month, the agency is planning to rescind that request—and to issue a new one under a different acquisition authority.
When it comes to developing and deploying new technologies for the Space Force and other space-focused units in the Defense Department, the Space Development Agency wants to be on a two-year cycle. But influential Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.) criticized that plan as too slow and ...
The Defense Department's Space Development Agency wants to blanket Earth with a constellation of low-cost, open-architecture data-relay and missile-tracking satellites whose sheer numbers, along with their 1,000-kilometer-high orbits, would theoretically thwart some modes of interference—but not all. With all going according to plan so far, ...
Pentagon officials are nailing down what the military wants to see from its next round of new satellites procured by the Space Development Agency, with a request for proposals due out this summer, the agency’s director said Feb. 16. The Defense Department is in the ...