Pentagon awards satellite contracts to Northrop Grumman, York

News Snapshot:

The Pentagon's Space Development Agency on Monday announced about $1.3 billion in contracts to York Space and Northrop Grumman to build communications satellites. SDA is having the pair of companies build 100 satellites as part of a network the U.S. military is building called the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA). These satellites will be for "Alpha" variant prototypes in the "Tranche 2 Transport Layer" constellation, also known as T2TL-Alpha, to provide encrypted communications. Under the T2TL-Alpha awards, Northrop Grumman will build 38 "data transport" satellites for $732 million, while York will build 62 satellites for $617 million. The SDA's schedule...