HOT TOPIC: BIG-TICKET SPACE PROGRAMS UNDER NEW MANAGEMENT
Congress in last year's defense policy bill shifted the balance of power in the management of major weapon systems from the Office of the Secretary of Defense to the individual military services. In the space business, this is having significant repercussions as the Air Force regains control of billions of dollars worth of programs that were being controlled from the Pentagon.
"The Air Force has asked for reversion of several major programs back from OSD AT&L," said Air Force Lt. Gen. John F. Thompson, commander of the Space and Missile Systems Center, in Los Angeles.
"They granted us several programs back that the Air Force will shepherd forward," Thompson said Friday at a Capitol Hill event. The Pentagon over the years — in response to a wave of troubled programs — had seized the so-called "milestone decision authority" of many programs. The services in these cases were not allowed to clear a weapon system to move forward from early design into development or production without DoD approval.
The Air Force only would confirm that four unclassified programs were transferred back from DoD: - Space-Based Infrared System follow-on
- Protected satellite communications services aggregated (now called evolved strategic SATCOM)
- Mid-term polar satellite communications (now called enhanced polar system recapitalization)
- Global Positioning System user equipment increment 2
One major program that is staying under Pentagon oversight is the OCX ground-system modernization for the new GPS 3 constellation. In fact, OCX has been in such deep trouble that help from the Pentagon's Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisitions, Technology and Logistics is welcome, according to Thompson. "Some programs need to stay in AT&L," he said. "But you'll see a battle rhythm of additional reversions back to us." Eventually "we will find the sweet spot, the right balance."
In general, Congress giving authorities back to the services is good news, said Thompson. "All of that is beneficial to move programs faster." | | CAN THE AIR FORCE MOVE FASTER?
Thompson, a c areer procurement officer who has run some of the Pentagon's largest programs, is also delegating authorities within his own shop. He is doing that in an effort to compress the acquisitions timelines from years down to months. Traditionally military projects are reward for "dependability, predictability," he said. Now the priorities are innovation and speed. "We have to learn how to take more risk."
About 40 percent of the Space and Missile Systems Center portfolio — about $3 billion worth of programs — are being delegated to lower level directors. "They don't have to come asking 'Mother may I?' to me," said Thompson. But he added he will not leave people hanging out to dry when things don't go well. "I will still answer for how the programs perform."
SPACE AGE 2.0
"We are partnering with commercial industry," said Thompson. Starting in the 2019 budget, he said, there will be more opportunities for "experimentation and prototyping."
The military is looking for a way to profit from the space venture capital boom.
According to the investment firm Space Angels, of the nearly 250 space ventures that have been launched since 2009, 88 percent were funded by non-government entities. Bank of America Merrill Lynch projected the space industry will grow to $2.7 trillion in 30 years — nearly triple Morgan Stanley's estimate of $1.1 trillion by 2040.
The Air Force is especially intrigued by the low-cost manufacturing techniques of satellite startups. "Imagine that instead of a $100 million exquisite satellite that can't fail, we buy 100 $1 million satellites," he said. The result would be a more "resilient, risk-absorbing" constellation. "How about applying to our satellites a production mentality. Our satellites are produced from a science perspective. What if we applied industrial engineering and mass produced satellites?"
PREPARING FOR WAR IN SPACE
It's an ambitious goal: A 'resilient, affordable space force' by 2025. And it's doable, retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Jay Santee told me in a recent interview. He is the new vice president of The Aerospace Corp., in Colorado Springs, and is advising the Air Force on how to bring to fruition its "space war fighting construct" — a mesh of initiatives to maintain space superiority in the 21st century.
Adversaries are threatening U.S. access and freedom to operate in space, said Santee. The challenge is to be able to defend U.S. assets in space without compromising the quality of space-based services that the military depends upon, such as communications, navigation, weather and missile warning.
"The goal is to create an architecture that presents a credible deterrence and a capability that can win a war," he said. "Our real problem is that it takes us longer to build systems than we're allotted by the threat." Is there a solution? Yes, said Santee. "Making sure budgets, requirements and procurement strategies are aligned to go faster."
So how do you get resilience? "We'll probably look at disaggregation," said Santee. That means using smaller satellites in larger numbers so the constellation will be harder to take down. "The U.S. can do this if we set our minds to it. It will take leadership from the top." Space in the future will not be a friendly environment, he insisted. Portions of the Air Force that "have been space operators will have to be warfighters."
How to connect space systems into a battle network is a key topic of debate. The "battle management command and control," dubbed BMC2, is an essential capability, said Santee. "Traditionally in space systems we didn't really have to battle manage command and control, we didn't need to fight as an enterprise." Future satellites will "fight, talk and maneuver together to outpace the threat." An example of battle management: When signals that provide communications to a military unit on the ground are jammed, the space warriors jump in immediately and get the users back online.
It's not clear that the Air Force has enough money to execute this vision, Santee cautioned. "We have to invest in BMC2, in common ground systems, defenses, satellites that can be defended. Essentially we have none of that." | | |  SATELLITE TECHNOLOGY
FOR NAVAL INTELLIGENCE
Reuters reported in August that Iranian ships were transporting weapons covertly to Houthi rebels in Yemen either directly to that country or via Somalia, risking contact with international vessels on patrol in the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea.
A ship-tracking technology that Harris Corp. unveiled in June would make it harder for these types of clandestine operations to go undetected. Harris and Canada's ExactEarth are deploying a constellation of maritime-tracking sensors that would pinpoint the location of ships around the world. The sensors are hosted payloads on Iridium Next communications satellites,
The technology to track ships via their Automatic Identification System beacons is decades old. But when these sensors are up and running on 60 satellites, the Navy potentially could use the information as actionable intelligence and ships at sea would find it much more difficult to cover up their identify.
I spoke with David Mottarella, Harris senior manager for maritime geospatial solutions. He declined to comment on any Navy-specific use of this technology or specific services the company might be offering to the U.S. government. He said being aboard the Iridium constellation — expected to reach 60 satellites by the middle of next year — allows for more frequent updates, and much reduced data latencies. "You get higher definition of a track from a ship." The technology is in the testing phase, he said. "We are in the transition phase, and have spoken to many customers."
NO GPS? NO WORRIES
The Air Force spends billions of dollars launching and maintaining the GPS constellation on which the world depends. But fears of bad actors intentionally jamming or spoofing signals also are fueling investments in alternative navigation technologies. Case in point: The Air Force Research Laboratory teamed up with Northrop Grumman to develop software called "all source adaptive fusion" to guide aircraft to targets on land or sea without using GPS satellite signals.
Northrop Grumman developed the concept and the AFRL invested in the "maturation and demonstration over the past several years," said company spokesman Brooks McKinney. "We continue to collaborate on best ways to apply the technology to airborne systems that may need to operate in denied GPS environments."
The software uses high-speed algorithms and hardware to help navigate from data gathered from a variety of sources including radar, electro-optical/infrared, light detection and ranging, star tracker, magnetometer, altimeter and other signals. It is one of several "denied GPS" approaches used by Northrop Grumman. The company plans to market this technology across the military.
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