L3Harris and Sierra Space win $1.75 billion SDA missile-tracking award
L3Harris · Sierra Space
The Space Development Agency awarded the two companies a combined $1.75 billion to build 36 Tranche 3 missile-tracking satellites.
what happened
The Space Development Agency awarded L3Harris Technologies and Sierra Space a combined $1.75 billion under the Accelerated Missile Defense Tranche 3 (AMDT3) program, per Sierra Space and SpaceNews. L3Harris receives about $955 million to build 18 Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor-like missile defense variant satellites, and Sierra Space receives $798 million for 18 missile warning and tracking variant satellites based on its Horizon spacecraft, each company covering two orbital planes for the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture's Tracking Layer. SDA said the 36 satellites are expected to be available for launch by the end of 2028.
why it matters
This is another nine-figure production order for two of the Pentagon's proliferated-constellation primes, extending SDA's pattern of fixed-price awards to multiple vendors rather than a single contractor. For Sierra Space and L3Harris it is recurring, near-term satellite manufacturing revenue layered on earlier SDA tranches; for competing bus builders it confirms the Tracking Layer buy is continuing at scale into Tranche 3.
signal-to-noise
quick facts
- Companies
- L3Harris, Sierra Space
- Category
- procurement
- Impact
- major
- SNR
- 4 / 5
- Event date
- 2026-07-13
- Published
- 2026-07-14 05:39 UTC