Northrop Grumman awarded up to $732M for satellite contract

Fortune 500 Falls Church defense contractor Northrop Grumman will build 38 data transport satellites for the U.S. Space Force’s Space Development Agency under a contract valued up to $732 million as the agency builds out a space-based communications network.

The work, announced Monday by the agency, falls under Tranche 2 Transport Layer – Alpha, a prototype constellation that the agency is rolling out as part of its low-Earth orbit Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture. Denver-based York Space Systems will build 62 satellites under a $617 million agreement, bringing the total award up to about $1.3 billion.

The alpha constellation variant will provide encrypted communications for warfighters and provide missile warning, tracking and advance missile threats and supports the Pentagon’s Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2) mission to provide “sensor-to-shooter” connectivity across the military branches into a single network. Monday’s announcement follows another, from August, in which the SDA announced $1.5 billion in awards, including about $733 to Northrop Grumman and about $816 million to Bethesda, Maryland-based Lockheed Martin, for 72 beta variants, with each company providing 36 satellites.

The first orbital plane of the alpha constellation is expected to be launched by Sept. 2026, the same month that the first beta prototype plane is expected to be ready for launch. The SDA has announced awards to Northrop Grumman for 132 satellites so far.

“Northrop Grumman, in partnership with our industry teammates, is fully committed to the Space Development Agency’s vision of fielding a next-generation, low-Earth orbit architecture connecting and protecting our warfighters wherever they serve,” Blake Bullock, Northrop Grumman’s vice president of communications systems, said in a news release. “Our Northrop Grumman team is bringing our deep Military SATCOM (satellite communications) experience to this mission, and we’re executing on our commitments.”

A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched the first satellites in the network, Tranche 0, from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on April 2 to demonstrate the network’s feasibility.

Defense contractor Northrop Grumman employs roughly 95,000 employees and reported $36.6 billion in 2022 revenue. The company ranked No. 413 on Fortune magazine’s Global 500 list for 2023, and No. 113 on its annual 1000 list of U.S. corporations for the year.