Strong Space Acquisition Leader A Must: Wilson

Former Secretary of the Air Force Heather Wilson knows a thing or two about defense acquisition, as well as internal DoD turf wars over budget and acquisition authorities. Wilson retired from the Air Force at the end of May to take up the presidency of the University of Texas at El Paso. While during her tenure she advised against the concept of a Space Force separate from the Air Force, she testified in favor of the Trump Administration’s final concept — now enacted — of a Marine Corps-like structure for the new force underneath the Air Force. In one of her first op-eds since her resignation, Wilson urges DoD Secretary Mark Esper and other Pentagon leaders to support the 2020 NDAA mandate to create a new space acquisition authority reporting to her replacement, Barbara Barrett. Read on. 

While attention focused on the creation of a Space Force with the signature of the National Defense Authorization Act, one of the most important elements of the new law went largely unnoticed — the creation of a separate and integrated acquisition authority for space systems reporting directly to the Secretary of the Air Force.

The number of people needed to operate systems in space is relatively small and is likely to remain so. To be sure, America is the best in the world at space and it is an important element in our nation’s defense, enabling many other military capabilities. Our adversaries understand this and are developing the capability to deny our use of space in crisis or war.

The military operates about 80 satellites and the Intelligence Community has 40 or so more. While the Navy has about a dozen special communication satellites, the services have already agreed that the next generation of those systems will be designed by the Air Force and now, presumably, operated by the new Space Force. The military uses satellites for communication, weather forecasting, missile warning, intelligence collection and navigation. Almost a third of military satellites on orbit are familiar to Americans because they provide the blue dot on their phones. GPS is a fairly weak radio signal broadcast from a constellation of some 33 satellites provided for free to a billion people every day by the United States military.

It takes only about 40 people to operate those GPS satellites. Space is more capital intensive than people intensive. Over the years, the Pentagon has sometimes struggled to keep space systems acquisition aligned with space strategy and current with the threat. While the most important thing the Congress can do is fund advanced space capabilities, the provision in the Defense Authorization Act to align acquisition authorities will go a long way toward getting space systems aligned with a new strategy for a contested domain.

Currently, the two largest entities that buy space systems are the National Reconnaissance Office and the Air Force. The NRO was started in the 1960s as a joint project between the CIA and the Air Force. A so-called “black” program, the strategic intelligence collections systems developed and operated by the NRO were hidden inside the Air Force budget and for many years the undersecretary of the Air Force was simultaneously the director of the NRO. In 1992, with the acknowledgement of the existence of the NRO, and the subsequent creation of the Director of National Intelligence with greater responsibility for the Intelligence Community, the NRO has become more independent.

Still, the NRO and the Air Force have maintained close ties that have gotten even closer in recent years. Forty percent of the personnel at the NRO are airmen and the entities benefit from each other’s research, but the real driver behind closer cooperation is the emerging threat and increasing integration between sensing systems and warfighters.

Threat drives strategy; strategy drives concepts of operation and acquisition needs. If a space force is going to defend our most important satellites, that mission must include protecting those operated by the NRO. That means new satellites must be designed to be defensible.

More importantly, as the military is shifting toward a doctrine of multi-domain warfare, the organic connection between all space systems and all other domain assets is vitally important. An enemy ship may be detected by a space asset. Tracking that ship may be done by an airborne platform, while targeting and destroying it may be done by a ground-based missile or a cyber attack. All of this will happen faster than ever before. Multi-domain operations at speed requires that systems be interoperable and mutually reinforcing. The best way to achieve that synergy is to design them that way from the beginning.

The most recently established DoD element for buying space equipment was the Space Development Agency. With an unclear mission and no Congressional mandate or serious funding, the Agency has struggled to get going. Its initial justification — purchase of a commercially based Low Earth Orbit system of satellites — would have worked in the past when no one could disable those satellites. Creation of this new office disconnected from the threat and the needs of the warfighter was highly unlikely to survive serious scrutiny.

Within the Air Force, the largest program office for acquisition is for space systems. The Space and Missiles Systems Center in Los Angeles spends about $6 billion a year. In addition, a Space Rapid Capabilities Office uses new acquisition authorities to accelerate getting space systems to the warfighter.

The administration’s legislative proposal on space was silent on acquisition reform — largely because too many vested interests in the Pentagon and the Intelligence Community couldn’t reach agreement on needed reforms. In the National Defense Authorization Act, the Congress took decisive action.

The act creates a second acquisition executive reporting to the secretary of the Air Force specifically to buy space systems tied to military needs. It consolidates and focuses all of the Pentagon’s space equipment purchasers under one responsible office. That office will work closely with the NRO and oversee coordination of space systems architecture with the Intelligence Community.

Having seen some of the turf battles over space procurement from inside the Pentagon, we can fully expect that there will be elements that resist the explicit congressional direction in the defense bill. Secretary Esper and Secretary Barrett should use this opportunity to resist the turf battles and align equipment purchasers under a strong space acquisition authority who can move quickly and meet the needs of warfighters.