SDA Cuts 11 Satellites from Low-Earth Orbit Demo to Focus on Operational Work

The Space Development Agency last year quietly canceled plans to launch 11 satellites meant to conduct communications experiments in low-Earth orbit, Air & Space Forces Magazine has learned.

The agency made the decision to “descope” the Tranche 1 Demonstration and Experimentation System late last year, according to an SDA official, as a deliberate move to focus on operationalizing its first satellites.

The Tranche 1 Demonstration and Experimentation System, known as T1DES, was initially envisioned as a 12-satellite experiment to reduce risk for future SDA missions by demonstrating that capabilities previously performed in geosynchronous or other orbits could be conducted in low-Earth orbit. In 2022, the agency awarded York Space Systems a contract worth up to $200 million for the effort and planned to launch the satellites this year. 

In 2024, SDA asked York to accelerate the delivery of one of those satellites and prepare it to launch about six months ahead of schedule, in June 2025. The company met the challenge and the mission—dubbed Dragoon—met all of its objectives. 

While the plan had been to launch the remaining 11 T1DES satellites this year, the agency opted to cut the program short and instead apply lessons learned from that single satellite to future missions. While cost was a factor in that decision, the official said Dragoon’s success and the need to focus on SDA’s operational objectives were the primary drivers for scaling back the demonstration effort. 

“We were able to achieve sufficient risk reduction for Tranche 2 with Dragoon, and we wanted to ensure all vendor efforts and components were tightly focused on delivering viable mission capabilities to the warfighter,” according to the SDA official. 

The formal process to cancel T1DES began in December, and the official said the agency is negotiating the final details of the “award descope.” A York spokesperson said the contract is being modified so that the remaining satellites “can be made available to York for the rapid deployment of future missions.”

SDA was created in 2019 to develop a constellation of small satellites in low-Earth orbit—the Pentagon’s first major attempt to shift toward a more proliferated architecture. The agency’s focus has been on fielding data transport and missile warning and tracking satellites, with a strategy that emphasizes regular technology refreshes and competition. In 2023, it launched its first batch of satellites, Tranche 0, and it is now in the midst of putting its first operational spacecraft on orbit. 

But the agency and its vendor base have faced challenges bringing those first Tranche 1 satellites online. After completing two launches last fall of what was supposed to be a steady 10-month campaign to field 152 satellites, the agency pressed pause on its launches. While that was partially driven by launch schedule issues outside of SDA’s control, Director Gurpartap Sandhoo has also attributed the slow-down to scaling challenges. 

“I think the biggest thing we have learned in this whole journey of a proliferated architecture is all the choke points that we have in the way we used to buy things when you had onesie, twosies versus at scale,” he told Air & Space Forces Magazine in February. “You don’t realize the weak points until you actually do it.”

But perhaps looming larger than those growing pains are questions about SDA’s future. The House and Senate Armed Services Committees have passed draft fiscal 2027 policy legislation that, if approved in the final National Defense Authorization Act, would give the Space Force the greenlight to dissolve the agency amid a broader acquisition shakeup. Officials, including Air Force Secretary Troy Meink and acting Space Force acquisition executive Thomas Ainsworth, have said they want to move away from rapid acquisition offices separate from the main enterprise and instead incorporate SDA’s speed across all acquisition. Sandhoo was recently named as the head of the service’s missile warning and tracking portfolio, which will likely absorb the agency’s missile tracking mission. And the Space Force has said it doesn’t plan to fund additional SDA transport satellites beyond Tranche 2.

That plan is not yet finalized, and in the meantime, SDA continues to focus on bringing its first satellites into operations and launching the remaining Tranche 1 and Tranche 2 satellites. Dragoon will inform that work, the SDA official said, providing “actionable and meaningful risk reduction for Tranche 2.” 

York—a key SDA vendor contracted to build 136 satellites over three phases of SDA’s data transport layer—announced June 24 the demonstration successfully proved that its satellite in LEO could send and receive tactical data via Ultra High Frequency, a mission traditionally performed from GEO. Dragoon conducted five demonstrations over a three-month period and will remain available for additional testing over the next few months, according to both SDA and York. 

“Two-way connectivity between a satellite and ground forces is operationally essential, and we’ve now demonstrated it on orbit,” York’s General Manager and Executive Vice President Melanie Preisser said in a press release. “That opens doors to mission sets that matter deeply to national defense.”