L3Harris advances its latest US missile defence designs to the production stage

L3Harris and the US Space Development Agency (SDA) have achieved the critical design review and production readiness review for SDA’s Tranche 2 (T2) Tracking Layer, L3Harris announced on 4 August 2025.

“Advancing this program to the production stage marks an important step toward a next-generation, layered defence architecture that can track threats in real time,” the company noted, calling the milestone “a major stride toward bolstering our nation’s missile defense capabilities”.

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

L3Harris is supporting the 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 a near-global missile warning, tracking and defence capability.

“L3Harris is committed to working closely with SDA to put proliferated missile warning and tracking capability on orbit as quickly as possible,” Rob Mitrevski, president for Golden Dome strategy and Integration at L3Harris, was quoted as saying in a company press release. “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.”

Further to its T2 Tracking Layer work, L3Harris is building eight electro-optical/infrared payloads for the SDA’s Fire-control On Orbit-support-to-the-war Fighter (FOO Fighter) programme.

The company is also looking toward the Golden Dome programme: an initiative intended to produce a multi-layered defence system that will protect the United States from various missile threats, including cruise, ballistic and hypersonic missiles. US President Donald Trump signed an executive order directing the US military to construct such a system on 27 January 2025.

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

To facilitate its space defence work, L3Harris noted that it has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in infrastructure and manufacturing processes across the United States, including USD 250 million (EUR 215 million) to renovate and expand manufacturing facilities for space-based missile warning and defense technologies in Indiana, Florida and Massachusetts.