| WHAT THE INDUSTRY IS WATCHING To modernize space systems the Air Force needs more resources and more acquisition flexibility, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson told the Potomac Officers Club Space Innovations, Programs and Policies Summit last week. The service has proposed a 20 percent increase for space in the president's budget this year. To oversee space efforts, the Air Force has created a new deputy chief of staff for space superiority office. Deputy chief of Air Force Space Command Maj. Gen. David Thompson has been nominated for promotion to lieutenant general to serve in the new position.
Having a three-star "thinking about space every morning" is significant, said Donovan. "Secretary Wilson has said she spends one third of her time worrying about space issues. I can attest to that." Donovan also touted the role of Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein. "I have never seen a chief of staff so involved in the space area. Previous chiefs ceded that to the secretaries. That is really putting your money where your mouth is."
Industry analyst Jim McAleese summed up Wilson's recent actions as "doubling down on space."
A big question is how far the Air Force will go to open the market so it can bring more innovation to space programs. "We are trying to move as many programs into rapid acquisition authorities as possible," said Donovan. "We'd be remiss if we were not able to look at commercial technology and adapt it to military use. We have to open our apertures."
Osterthaler is skeptical. "Change doesn't happen because the government acquisition ecosystem says 'let's change the way we do business.' It happens because people like Elon Musk raise enough hell in the system and eventually somebody has to respond."
Osterhaler said the pressure from the House NDAA language will compel the Air Force to rethink its procurement methods. "I think the secretary is going to be very effective because of her background," he said. "She will be more effective than the political appointees we've had in the past. But it remains to be seen if it goes far enough, if it's a transitory response until the HASC legislation goes away and we go back to old habits. I hope that's not the case."
MILITARY VS COMMERCIAL
At the center of this debate is the question of why the military would continue to invest in technologies that already are being developed and funded by the private sector, insisted Osterthaler. "As a nation, the cost of pursuing separate commercial and government solutions in space is that we end up with less capability." An example is high-throughput satellites. The government said it did not have a requirement even though it needed the capability, he said. "The business of trying to build a requirement to meet a new innovative capability is tortuous at best."
MORE SPACE COMPANIES INVITED
Six satellite operators — Intelsat, Inmarsat, SES Government Solutions, Iridium, DigitalGlobe and Eutelsat — have been members of the "commercial integration cell" at Schriever Air Force Base, Colo. It started out as a pilot program but Space Command leaders now want the industry to have a more permanent presence. A seventh player — Xtar — recently joined the club.
"This is a good thing because X band is a frequency band that is very important to the Navy and other agencies outside of DoD," Charles Cynamon, a former Air Force Space Command official a now vice president of LinQuest told me. He said the government is warming up to the idea that it needs to "integrate" capabilities with the private sector.
Commercial and military satcom are managed as two separate entities. "In the future the industry would like to see an integrated and unified enterprise." The operations center of Hughes Space, for instance, is a microcosm of what DoD wants, said Cynamon. Hughes owns three satellites but also leases dozens of transponders from other providers. At the operations center they manage payloads for the satellites they own but they get the actual telemetry of the transponders from Inmarsat, Intelsat, SES, or whoever they're leasing transponders from. "They have that insight and they look at the entire network end to end, whether it's leased or owned transponders."
NEW BEGINNING FOR OCX?
One of the military's most criticized software procurements — the GPS 3 operational control system, or OCX — appears to be back on track. Prime contractor Raytheon delivered the GPS 3 launch and checkout system acceptance package to the government Sept. 29. The U.S. Air Force is still "validating that the contractual requirements are met and on schedule to reach a projected acceptance decision in November 2017," Raytheon spokeswoman Heather Uberuaga told me.
The estimated $6 billion program has come under fire on Capitol Hill for delays and became a poster child for the military's continued difficulties deploying new software. The Pentagon often buys software like it buys major weapon systems — in years-long development cycles that are out of synch with the pace of technology refresh and delivers systems to the military that are outdated from day one. In the case of OCX, the original version failed cybersecurity tests and the Air Force had no easy way to patch up the vulnerabilities. More to come on this program. | 
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