Mantis Society Study Center: SN Military.Space | Defense bill packed with military space reforms headed for House, Senate votes. How will NDAA impact space industry?

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

SN Military.Space | Defense bill packed with military space reforms headed for House, Senate votes. How will NDAA impact space industry?

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

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by Sandra Erwin • serwin@spacenews.com

HOT TOPIC: SPACE REORG COULD BE MASSIVE

During a joint appearance at the Pentagon last week, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson and Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein had little to say to reporters about the sweeping reorganization of military space outlined in the House and Senate National Defense Authorization Act conference report for fiscal year 2018.

The bill is headed to the House floor in the coming days, followed by the Senate likely next week.

Wilson suggested it was premature to comment on "still pending legislation" and noted that "further analysis" will precede any final decision. She reaffirmed the Air Force remains responsible to "organize, train and equip forces for combat." And she again reminded people that the Air Force has been working hard to give space the attention it deserves. "Everyone agrees that space needs to be integrated, normalized as a part of a joint war fighting effort," she said. And the Air Force is proposing a 20 percent increase for space in 2018.

Goldfein pressed on further. The United States "expects its Air Force to own the high ground, the ultimate high ground and achieve space superiority which is like air superiority, freedom to attack and freedom to maneuver."

Both leaders have been under political fire and the NDAA compromise sends them a message to get ready for extraordinary changes in the management of military space. Although it stopped short of creating a Space Corps, the NDAA would set in motion a bureaucratic realignment and possibly a "Space Department" within the Air Force.

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REACTION SO FAR

Since the conference report came out, I spoke with analysts and space industry officials to get their reaction. They caution that the devil is in the details, but that the Air Force needs to prepare for this language to become law.

"I think what's most critical about these reforms are the steps they take to prepare a future space organization," said Lauren Fish, a defense policy analyst at the Center for a New American Security. "While requiring a Space Corps by 2019 was rushed in my view, it reflected the importance of space as a war fighting domain."

What else is significant? These reforms will protect DoD space dollars from the rest of the Air Force budget, which was a critical goal of Space Corps supporters, Fish noted. Will this end up piling on new layers of bureaucracy and exacerbate the problem Congress was trying to fix? Possibly. But everyone needs to get on board for the sake of national security, he said. "Together, Congress and DoD should consider what the next five to 25 years look like in this domain — including how militarization of space might unfold and the implications of commercialization in space."

Todd Harrison, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, summed it up this way: The bill is a clear rebuke of the current space organization, and the language and tone of the summary accompanying the bill suggests a lack of confidence in the secretary of the Air Force and the chief of staff. The winners: The commander of Air Force Space Command and the deputy secretary of defense.

SATCOM INDUSTRY: WHAT NOW?

At the annual Global Milsatcom conference in London last week, the news of the NDAA report reverberated fast. The reaction from executives huddled around the exhibit hall: What does this mean for the wideband study? And who will oversee the integration of the space and ground segments? These are the practical concerns the industry worries about. Much is at stake for vendors if and when the reorganization of the Air Force space functions takes effect.

A significant concern is what will happen to the office of the principal defense space adviser, a title now held by Secretary Wilson. The NDAA would nix that office, along with the Defense Space Council, and the Air Force A11 Deputy Chief of Staff for Space Operations — a slot that was just created a few months ago. The PDSA has been leading the wideband communications "analysis of alternatives" that will determine how the Pentagon buys satellite bandwidth in the future. The PDSA also had been overseeing an effort to better coordinate satellite and ground-station programs. This is an important issue to the industry and the government because both segments have been chronically out of synch, causing disruption to programs and running up the cost of space capabilities.

The NDAA would give Air Force Space Command primary authority over space programs. Again, the details on this are fuzzy.

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SATELLITE SERVICES SECTOR DODGES BULLET, FOR NOW

The NDAA would ban the Pentagon from contracting satellite services from suppliers whose systems are designed, manufactured or launched by a "covered foreign country," meaning Russia, China, North Korea and any country deemed a state sponsor of terrorism. But it exempts launches between now and Dec. 31, 2022. This provision had been strongly opposed by the satcom sector, which is a global industry that makes regular use of Russian rockets, namely the Proton rocket marketed by Reston, Virginia-based International Launch Services. Without access to Russian launchers, satellite operators fear they will have fewer options in the market.

A five-year reprieve would give the industry time to regroup and see how the launch market reshapes. Space journalist Eric Berger of Ars Technica noted that as recently as 2013, Russia's rockets commanded nearly half of the global share of the commercial launch market. Since then, the emergence of other players, notably SpaceX, has considerably shrunk the Russian position. This year, Russia has made 17 successful orbital launches, but only about a third of them have flown for paying customers other than the Russian government or the International Space Station, Berger noted. By contrast, SpaceX has made 16 launches this year, 11 of which have been for commercial customers. "A SpaceX projection for 2018 suggests that disparity will continue to grow if the company continues to increase the flight rate of its Falcon 9 rocket."