L3Harris completes design review for SDA Tranche 3 tracking satellites

what happened

L3Harris said Sept. 24 it completed the preliminary design review for the 18 satellites it is building for the Space Development Agency's Tracking Layer Tranche 3, part of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture. The company said Tranche 3 required major updates to its payload and payload performance compared with its Tranche 1 and Tranche 2 satellites to meet the SDA's requirement for near-continuous global missile warning and tracking. SDA awarded L3Harris the contract to build the 18 spacecraft in December 2025, valued up to $843 million.

why it matters

The milestone keeps L3Harris's share of the Pentagon's proliferated missile-tracking constellation on schedule as the program advances from the simpler Tranche 1/2 satellites to the more capable Tranche 3 generation; L3Harris says it now has more than 70 missile-tracking and defense satellites on order across SDA's tranches.

signal-to-noise

quick facts

Companies

L3Harris

Category

procurement

Impact

noise

SNR

5 / 5

Event date

2026-09-24

Published

2026-09-24 22:06 UTC