SDA Director Sandhoo says first tracking satellite launch slips to spring

SDA Director Gurpartap “GP” Sandhoo said Oct. 28, 2026, at the MilSat Symposium during Silicon Valley Space Week that the agency’s first missile-tracking satellites will not launch in 2026 and are now expected next spring. SpaceNews reports the U.S. Space Force’s first operational missile-tracking satellites are expected in spring 2027, almost two years behind the original schedule, while the government weighs flight demonstrations before buying large numbers of next-generation sensors. Sandhoo said he had hoped for a first tracking satellite launch in 2026, but it does not look like that will happen.

SDA’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture relies on the tracking layer for half of its design. The layer tracks hypersonic weapons and dim, fast-moving threats. Sandhoo said 84 satellites are on orbit and that checkouts are moving slower than he would like. Getting 21 or 42 satellites working after launch is a different challenge from launching one or two, he said, especially as SDA fields larger batches.

Northrop Grumman’s Oct. 10, 2026, launch marked the fourth Tranche 1 mission overall, sending 21 satellites from Vandenberg Space Force Base aboard a Falcon 9 five days after an Oct. 5, 2026, countdown abort in the final minute for an undisclosed reason. That launch brought the deployed Tranche 1 data-transport total to 84 of 126 planned satellites, all flown on Falcon 9 rockets from Vandenberg. All three Tranche 1 transport vendors have at least one satellite plane in orbit.

Earlier missions – T1TL-B on Sept. 10, 2025, T1TL-C on Oct. 15, 2025, and T1TL-E on July 16, 2026 – left 63 satellites in orbit. Sandhoo laid out six more Tranche 1 launches after the four already completed. Tranche 1 should begin providing operational capabilities to the Defense Department in 2027. Its finished form will field 126 transport satellites, 28 tracking satellites and four missile defense demonstration craft.

The Transport Layer will include between 300 and 500 satellites in low-Earth orbit from 750 km to 1,200 km in altitude, with 95 percent of the globe in view of at least two T1TL satellites at any given time. The satellites use optical inter-satellite links and will integrate with Link-16 and the Integrated Broadcast System.

Tranche 2 is set to deploy 190 transport satellites and 54 tracking satellites over about 18 launches, while Tranche 3 will carry tracking satellites only. Sandhoo puts the combined Tranche 3 total at about 474 satellites, including the 36 accelerated missile defense satellites tied to Golden Dome. A Tranche 4 request for information has been issued by SDA. It looks at next-generation sensors along with onboard compute, data processing and fusion.

Sandhoo also serves as the Space Force’s portfolio acquisition executive for missile warning and tracking, placing SDA’s low-Earth-orbit work under the same executive as the Space Force’s MEO, HEO and GEO sensing programs and early-warning radars. The new portfolio acquisition executive organizations will stand up in the next month or two without short-term change, Sandhoo said. Data transport goes to a separate executive for space-based sensing and targeting operating the Space Data Network, while SDA fields Tranche 1 and Tranche 2 transport satellites before handing them off.

The ground segment will become the bottleneck as SDA fields hundreds of satellites, Sandhoo expects, and that worry follows slower-than-desired checkouts for the satellites already on orbit. Later tranches should see that burden eased by added autonomy and on-orbit computing. For the first satellites, he said, ground is where SDA has to get it right. SDA will buy based on a modest demonstration, Sandhoo told vendors, and a grade of C+ or B- on one or two satellites can justify buying a plane or a full tranche.

Legacy missile-warning satellites in higher geosynchronous orbits cost more, face greater attack risk, and spot smaller, dimmer missiles less effectively because they are far from Earth, the Pentagon’s small fleet shows. SDA’s strategy called for rapidly procuring, developing and fielding new tranches of tracking and data transport satellites every two years, with launches expected at about a once-per-month pace.

The Pentagon established SDA in 2019 to speed deployment of U.S. military space systems by sidestepping its bureaucracy. The Pentagon plans to shutter SDA and fold the agency into a reorganized Space Force procurement pipeline overseen by program acquisition executives. Lawmakers in both houses backed the closure in drafts of the National Defense Authorization Act. Much of SDA’s mission will continue under another banner inside the U.S. Space Force, and missile-warning and data-relay satellites will eventually join the Pentagon’s planned Golden Dome missile shield.

York Space Systems and Lockheed Martin manufactured all 42 satellites that SDA placed in orbit during September and October 2025, after officials originally planned one Tranche 1 launch per month for 10 months. A federal government shutdown, technical hurdles and logistics problems pushed later launches to July 16, 2026. Soon after the first two launches, SDA had to contact every satellite and confirm it was operating, a challenge that drove the month-long checkout pause. A nine-month pause followed those early launches so teams could fix on-orbit hardware and software issues.

Earlier thermal models did not match actual readings, and satellites failed to connect with ground entry points as often as needed, so SDA worked with York and Lockheed on software and hardware fixes. Propulsion problems kept some Tranche 1 spacecraft out of their ideal orbital planes. Lockheed had not made contact with one of its satellites, though SDA said redundancy means the loss should not affect the mission. Vendor teams handed the first two batches to SDA ground operations centers as they moved from checkout to early operations.

After July 16, 2026, it was unclear whether SDA would resume a monthly cadence; the agency prioritized checkouts over schedule, and Sandhoo said he would accept a three-week launch delay instead of a four-month checkout delay. In July 2026, Sandhoo said three planes of satellites on orbit would let the agency begin providing real capability to the warfighter. A January Government Accountability Office report urged greater schedule realism and warned that SDA’s strategy favors speed over capability.