What SDA’s latest win signals for military space
The agency is working to build a massive constellation of satellites.
Amber Corrin | July 1, 2025 05:11 AM ET
Space Satellites
The Space Development Agency’s experimental satellite program just kicked off with a record-fast shift into full operating mode, offering what officials see as a promising start for an ambitious military space strategy.
The Dragoon spacecraft, launched June 23, is the first of 12 planned satellites developed as part of SDA’s Tranche 1 Demonstration and Experimentation System, or T1DES. With Dragoon, the program aims to demonstrate the mission viability of what’s slated to encompass a constellation of hundreds of low-Earth orbit military satellites.
But first, SDA Director Derek Tournear said he’s looking to Dragoon for two primary missions: proving the design and capacity of the York satellite bus transporting the spacecraft, then serving as a pathfinder for Tranche 1 satellites launching later this summer.
“In internal reviews, people were saying, ‘You guys are doing great work, but you really need to make sure that you burn down some of your tech risk before you do your large tranches.’ We said, ‘You know, that's a good idea.’ So that was one of the things we did on Dragoon,” Tournear said June 26 at the Defense One Tech Summit in Arlington, Va. “The beauty of this model is we do a demonstration…and that technology will feed directly into Tranche 2, and that’s how we continue to do this firewall.”
https://www.defenseone.com/technology/2025/07/what-sdas-latest-win-signals-military-space/406442/?oref=d1-featured-river-secondary
