SAIC wins $55M Space Development Agency integration contract

Science Applications International Corp. has won a five-year, $55 million contract that designates it as lead program integrator for part of the Space Development Agency’s main satellite constellation.

The contract tasks SAIC with systems engineering and related integration support activities to aid in SDA’s efforts to ensure compatibility and cohesion across the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture constellation.

SDA received five bids for the contract that focuses on PWSA’s Tranche 3 portion, the Pentagon said in its Tuesday awards digest.

PWSA is emerging as a layered constellation of hundreds of satellites being built to work together while in different orbits. SDA, an agile development arm of Space Force, envisions that network as communicating early warnings of missile launches and detecting those missiles.

SDA is dividing up the satellites into different sets, or “Tranches,” with Tranche 0 having started launches in the spring of 2023. Tranche 1 was scheduled to begin launches in the spring.

The agency is aiming to launch between 300 and 400 satellites for Tranches 1 and 2 over the next few years, while Tranche 3 will comprise of 200 satellites once fully up-and-running.