ORLANDO, Fla. — A congressional watchdog is warning that the Pentagon’s ambitious effort to overhaul missile warning and tracking from space is moving faster than its underlying technology and management practices can support.
In a report published Jan. 28, the Government Accountability Office called on the Space Development Agency to be more “realistic and transparent” about the risks facing its plan to deploy a large constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit to detect and track missile threats. The constellation, expected to cost nearly $35 billion through fiscal year 2029, is central to the Pentagon’s push to counter advanced weapons such as hypersonic missiles.
GAO said the program faces considerable risk because SDA is pressing ahead with successive satellite procurements while overestimating the maturity of critical technologies needed to deliver operational capability on schedule. The report focuses on the portion of the constellation known as the Tracking Layer, which uses infrared sensors to detect missile launches and follow missiles through flight.
“The Space Development Agency is at risk of being unable to deliver capability as quickly as planned,” GAO said, citing optimistic assessments of technology readiness for both spacecraft and ground systems.
SDA operates under the U.S. Space Force and was established in 2019 to break from traditional defense acquisition models. Beginning in 2020, the agency started building what it calls the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture, or PWSA—a network of hundreds of relatively small satellites designed to provide faster, more resilient missile warning and tracking than legacy systems operating from higher orbits. The architecture is built in “tranches,” with new generations of satellites acquired roughly every two years to refresh technology and add capacity.
Issues with cost estimates
GAO has issues with the tranche-based approach. The agency said SDA continues to award new tranche contracts on a fixed cadence without maintaining an overarching, architecture-level schedule that shows how delays in one tranche could affect the constellation as a whole.
At the same time, GAO said the Pentagon lacks a reliable estimate of what the full missile warning and tracking architecture will cost over its lifetime. According to the report, the Department of Defense “does not know the life-cycle cost to deliver missile warning and tracking capabilities because it has not created a reliable cost estimate,” in part because SDA required limited cost data from contractors in early tranches.
GAO also raised concerns about how SDA defines and validates requirements for the Tracking Layer. Investigators concluded SDA has not sufficiently collaborated with the combatant commands that would rely on the satellites for missile warning and tracking, leaving warfighters with limited insight into what capabilities will be delivered and when.
As a result, GAO warned, SDA risks fielding satellites that do not meet operational needs. Combatant commands told the watchdog that they lack visibility into how requirements are set and how decisions are made about deferring or scaling back capabilities.
The report echoes concerns GAO raised last year about SDA’s decision to advance procurement of later tranches before fully demonstrating key technologies in space. In that earlier assessment, GAO said SDA moved forward without proving that intersatellite laser communications — essential for moving missile tracking data quickly across the constellation — worked as intended.
In the new report, GAO said SDA justified its technology readiness assessments by pointing to the availability of commercial products used in Tranche 1 and Tranche 2. But GAO found that many of those systems required significant modification.
“Commercial buses and associated flight software provided by T1 contractors have required significant, unplanned development and upgrades to meet SDA requirements,” the report said, contributing to schedule delays and additional work.
List of recommendations
GAO also found problems in the ground segment, which is responsible for processing and distributing missile tracking data. The ground contract underestimated the scope of work and was “plagued from the start by confusion and misunderstandings about project scope and technical requirements,” the report said. SDA later modified the contract to add integration and software development tasks that had not been fully defined at award.
GAO issued six recommendations, including urging SDA to conduct more rigorous assessments of technology readiness, develop an architecture-level schedule, improve collaboration with warfighters, and require more complete cost data from contractors. The Department of Defense concurred with most of the recommendations but only partially agreed with one.
The findings carry broader implications for missile defense planning. The Tracking Layer is expected to play a central role in the Pentagon’s planned Golden Dome missile defense system, which aims to protect the continental United States against ballistic, hypersonic, and cruise missile threats, as well as certain aerial threats.
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