L3Harris Advances Latest Missile Defense Designs to Production Stage

In a major stride toward bolstering our nation’s missile defense capabilities, L3Harris and the Space Development Agency (SDA) have achieved the Critical Design Review and Production Readiness Review for SDA's Tranche 2 Tracking Layer. Advancing this program to the production stage marks an important step toward a next-generation, layered defense architecture that can track threats in real time.

“L3Harris is committed to working closely with SDA to put proliferated missile warning and tracking capability on orbit as quickly as possible,” said Rob Mitrevski, President, Golden Dome Strategy and Integration, L3Harris. “We demonstrated that L3Harris’ production design approach achieves both of SDA’s pillars of proliferation and spiral development. Our relentless pursuit of continued design improvement at scale is how L3Harris will answer the President’s call for a robust constellation of space-based sensors that can defend our nation against complex threats.”

The L3Harris Tranche 2 Tracking Layer design includes technology that can detect, track and target advanced missile threats on a global scale at low latency. The review validated that L3Harris’ space vehicle and ground system designs meet mission requirements and can proceed to production.

To meet SDA’s goals for rapid delivery of this capability for national defense, L3Harris production facilities are already building major assemblies for the T2 space vehicles. The company’s designs for the T2 program build upon our designs for Tranche 1, as well as for SDA’s Tranche 0 and the Missile Defense Agency’s Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor (HBTSS) satellites, already on orbit. 

L3Harris is supporting SDA’s Tracking Layer across all three tranches of the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), a robust constellation of satellites in low Earth orbit that will provide near-global missile warning, tracking and defense capability. In addition, L3Harris is building eight electro-optical infrared (EO/IR) payloads for SDA’s Fire-control On Orbit-support-to-the-war Fighter, or FOO Fighter program.

L3Harris has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure and manufacturing processes across the United States, including $250 million to renovate and expand manufacturing facilities for space-based missile warning and defense technologies in Indiana, Florida and Massachusetts.

L3Harris produces a range of proven technologies that could further enable the Golden Dome for America, including advanced space satellites, datalinks, multi-domain ISR, precision fire-control sensing, and propulsion and control systems for interceptors.