The plan is to grant two contractors Other Transaction Authority awards to design and build the "Alpha" variant of SDA's Tranche 2 Transport Layer satellites, with delivery of the first four in time for a September 2026 launch.
Marc Bell, Terran Orbital's CEO, told Breaking Defense that despite the decision to abandon plans for its PredaSAR subsidiary to operate a SAR-sat constellation, the company intends to fully uphold its obligations under a pair of contracts with NRO.
SDA will decide next March whether the UHF- and SHF-band payloads being tested by T1DES should be integrated into its next iteration of Transport Layer data relay satellites.