WASHINGTON —The Space Development Agency has awarded L3Harris Technologies and Sierra Space contracts, worth a total of $1.75 billion, to develop 36 satellites for missile warning, tracking, and targeting in support of the Pentagon’s Golden Dome missile shield.
The new birds, dubbed “Accelerated Missile Defense Tranche 3 (AMDT3) space vehicles (SVs),” are to be ready for launch in 2028 — which is when President Donald Trump has mandated Golden Dome to be operational. The previous SDA Tranche 3 Tracking Layer contracts, awarded last December to L3Harris, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman and Rocket Lab and worth up to $3.5 billion for 72 satellites, are not slated to launch until 2029.
“[T]he the good piece of this is that, I think, we can actually now go on the record and talk about … that it’s helping with the Golden Dome architecture, which is new and finally flowing some money,” Jeff Schrader, chief financial officer at Colorado-based startup Sierra Space, told Breaking Defense.
Under its contract worth up to about $955 million, L3Harris is to provide “18 Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor (HBTSS)-like missile defense variant SVs across two orbital planes,” according to SDA’s announcement on Monday.
