By Brig. Gen. (ret.) Damon Feltman, Chief Operating Officer, Space Force Association
Last week, Senate appropriators voted to direct the Secretary of the Air Force to restore funding to Space Development Agency’s (SDA) Tranche 3 Transport Layer (T3TL). In addition, appropriators added $500M to the program.
As previously written, the FY26 President’s Budget submission zeroed T3TL, with the given rationale that the Space Force is evaluating creation of a commercial-based pLEO “MILNET.” This pause and potential for cancellation created several risks that Senate language called out. One of these was to missile warning and track data delivery for SDA’s Tracking Layer, which is likely to be a critical component of the Golden Dome Architecture.
While the Senate’s direction is encouraging, restoration of T3TL is not certain. House appropriators do not have matching language in their version of the bill, making this an issue that must be addressed in conference. Then, assuming the final bill includes the restoration, the President must sign the final appropriations bill.
The value of T3TL is often misjudged due to persistent confusion about its role and capabilities. Even this past week, SDA’s Transport Layer was referred to as “Starlink-like” by a reputable commentator of the Space Force, as though SDA’s offering is smaller, less capable version of SpaceX’s broadband system. To be clear, Transport Layer and Starlink (or Starshield for MILNET) are “like” only in that they both are communications satellites in pLEO. The Venn Diagram of their relationship has more differences outside the overlap than similarities inside, including: more efficient routing of missile warning data; improvements to U.S. and allied tactical data networks; navigation warfare capabilities; and in-space compute.
Even if the communication and understanding were better known, there is still the issue of budget constraints leading to choices on what gets funded. There is value in both Transport and MILNET and not enough money for both. For all its budget growth since its creation, the Space Force has more requirements than money in the bank.
One potential for the budget challenge is to share the data and benefits with allies willing to contribute funding or a piece of the overall architecture. As part of its funding and fielding strategy for SDA’s architecture, bringing in allies and partners into the architecture could be a viable option.
The U.S. using shared or allied-funded assets in the space layer is not without precedent, especially in communications systems. Today, the Space Force has allies contributing to both Wideband Global SATCOM (WGS) and Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF). Furthermore, this step would “integrate with allies and partners across the full spectrum of Force Design” and align with a key pillar of the Space Force’s international partnership strategy. Next, and as already mentioned, a significant portion of SDA’s Transport Layer already includes improvements to tactical networks where our allies and partners participate. Shared resourcing for T3TL provides an avenue to further expand this. Finally, this step would add the opportunity to deliver Golden Dome missile warning data directly to allies, further incentivizing their participation.
Through either direct foreign military sales of finished products or allowing SDA prime vendors to license their designs to allies, arrangements could readily be made to integrate planes of partner satellites into the PWSA, add resiliency to the architecture, deepened ties with allies through common space missions, and offset costs. A blended, multi-national approach could create a path through this current funding challenge and yield a solution where U.S. government, allied, and commercial systems come together.
By strategically integrating allied capabilities into the PWSA, we can build a more robust and survivable network while solidifying international partnerships. The budget challenge is real, but a collaborative “Allied by Design” solution is not only a path to fiscal prudence but also a vital step toward a more resilient architecture.
