The Space Development Agency has sought proposals from industry to design and build satellites for the first tranche of the National Defense Space Architecture’s transport layer.
SDA expects the Tranche 1 Transport Layer to support warfighter missions worldwide by providing initial warfighting capability, global communications access and persistent regional encrypted connectivity, according to a solicitation notice posted Monday.
The agency plans to award contracts to multiple vendors to build 126 baseline space vehicles and up to 18 Partner Payload Program spacecraft that will be divided into six orbital planes, according to the proposal instructions document for the T1TL program.
Each company should propose to build two of the orbital planes with related ground support, sustainment capability and operations support.
The T1TL program will serve as a backbone for the Combined Joint All Domain Command and Control initiative by enabling low-latency data transport, direct-to-weapon connectivity and sensor-to-shooter connectivity.
Each baseline satellite should be equipped with optical communications terminals, a Ka-band communications payload and a battle management, command, control and communications compute module. SDA said each P3 space vehicle should also come with OCTs, a BMC compute module and a Ka-band communications payload.
Interested offerors should submit proposals containing five volumes. The first volume focuses on governance containing the vendor’s proposed system engineering approaches, program management and tools, while the second volume deals with the company’s proposed technical platform. The other three volumes should address the price and rationale, schedule and experience and past performance.
Proposals are due Oct. 1.
SDA issued a request for information for the T1TL program in April.
