The Space Development Agency awarded about $1.75 billion on July 13 for 36 more missile tracking satellites, split roughly $955 million to L3Harris for 18 and $798 million to Sierra Space for 18, all of them expected available for launch by the end of 2028. Three days later a Falcon 9 out of Vandenberg carried 21 more Transport Layer satellites, bringing Tranche 1 to 63 on orbit. The director who signed those awards, and who also holds the Space Force portfolio that buys missile warning and tracking, gives the first keynote of the MilSat Symposium at Silicon Valley Space Week in October.
Dr. Gurpartap “GP” Sandhoo directs the Space Development Agency and serves as the Space Force Portfolio Acquisition Executive for Missile Warning and Tracking, a dual role effective May 11 that the conference program does not show. He reports to the official performing the duties of Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration. He was SDA’s deputy director before this, overseeing the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture. Earlier he was Vice President and Chief Architect at Quantum Space, Director for Emerging Technologies at Northrop Grumman, Deputy Director at the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity, and held the Heinlein Chair in Astronautics at the U.S. Naval Academy. He led the Spacecraft Engineering Division at the Naval Research Laboratory and was acting director of the Naval Center of Space Technology, worked as a flight controller at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, and was a research and development engineer at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. He served 36 years in the Navy and Marine Corps, finishing as the National Reconnaissance Office liaison to Security Assistance Group-Ukraine and as a senior scientist at the Defense Innovation Unit. He holds degrees from the University of Maryland, George Washington University, Johns Hopkins and the Naval War College, including a doctor of science in aeronautics, astronautics and propulsion.
His portfolio is the one Golden Dome leans on. SDA describes the July award, which SatNews reported as $1.75 billion for 36 additional missile-tracking satellites, as support for Golden Dome for America, with the Space Force responsible for future operations and sustainment. “With these awards, SDA is accelerating the deployment of the Tracking Layer to provide the homeland, our deployed forces, and allies with global, persistent indications, detection, identification warning, tracking, and defense against advanced and evolving missile threats,” Sandhoo said. The timing is the part left open. Those satellites are expected available for launch by the end of 2028, against an interceptor program working to a 2028 clock. The structure he sits in is new as well. The Space Force finalized a nine-portfolio acquisition organization in July, and missile warning and tracking is one of those portfolios, alongside the space access portfolio Col. Eric Zarybnisky runs and discusses on the same stage later that afternoon.
Sandhoo gives the keynote on Wednesday, October 28, from 12:15 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. in the Hahn Auditorium at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. The program lists no interviewer. It follows the market brief that opens the symposium at noon, on commercial Earth observation’s dependence on government contracts, and it runs up to lunch in the Grand Hall.
Silicon Valley Space Week runs Tuesday, October 27 through Thursday, October 29 at the Computer History Museum, with Satellite Innovation across the first two days and the MilSat Symposium across the last two. Sandhoo’s keynote comes at midday on the symposium’s opening day. The 36 satellites his agency bought in July are not expected to be available for launch until the end of 2028.
