AFA 2025– The Room Growth Agency’s (SDA) intends to offer US army operators with positioning, navigating and timing (PNT) signals in situations where GPS is not available now are up in the air– as the Area Force reassesses pushing forward with the agency’s next set Transportation Layer information relay satellites.
SDA Supervisor Gurpartap “GENERAL PRACTITIONER” Sandhoo told press reporters Monday that the agency’s Proliferated Warfighter Space Design (PWSA) of communications and missile monitoring satellites in reduced Earth orbit will have “natural” PNT capability to ensure the constellations themselves can run “in instance GPS is refuted” by foe jamming.
However there’s a concern regarding whether SDA will be able to send those alternating PNT signals to warfighters on the ground if the Tranche 3 Transportation Layer is cancelled, Sandhoo stated.
“I don’t have a response for that,” he throughout the yearly Air and Space Forces Association seminar at National Harbor, Md. [
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SDA initially intended to buy 140 T 3 Transport Layer satellites in 3 different configurations to give around the world routing of high quantities of data with reduced latency, with introducing to begin in 2028 SDA in January produced a draft solicitation for 40 of the first variant, called Upsilon, asking for sector actions by Feb. 10 [
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With regard to PNT, the company’s planned Navigation Layer would certainly be based upon using the laser links amongst the PWSA satellites, by “leveraging two-way time transfer (TWTT) and ranging” provided, according to an SDA article on LinkedIn. It would have three objectives: maintaining “connection of operations” for SDA’s satellites, pinpointing GPS jamming and supplying that data to Room Force operators, and supplying “space-based PNT Providers” with a devoted signal, the firm described.
The SDA Warfighter Council last August authorized the incorporation in Tranche 3 of the “Lightweight Service” developed by the Flying force Lab to give the alternate PNT signal, according to the abstract of a paper co-authored by 2 company officials to name a few and submitted to the Institute of Navigating for its upcoming June conference.
The laboratory did not reply to a questions from Damaging Defense regarding the principle.
Nonetheless, as component of the spending plan drill for monetary 2026, the Division of the Air Force and the Area Force currently remain in the midst of an analysis of whether to change the T 3 birds by acquiring business services from SpaceX’s Starshield network under a strange program called MILNET
The solution put $ 277 million in its very first public budget request in FY 26 budget plan request, although there have been multiple reports from Room Pressure and congressional authorities that the program currently is underway.