Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. (USAF/ Senior Airman Alan Ricker)

COLORADO SPRINGS: New Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall is moving to shake up space acquisition, merging the currently semi-independent space acquisition shop with that of the Air Force acquisition, Breaking Defense has learned.

Kendall is set to make the announcement during his speech later today at the annual Space Foundation Space Symposium.

Shawn Barnes, who has been serving as the de facto head of the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration (SAF/SP), will now be the director of Air Force Financial Management Legislative Liaison. He is being effectively replaced by Brig. Gen. Steve Whitney, who has been serving as the director of Space Programs at the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Acquisition Technology & Logistics (SAF/AQ).

Andrew Hunter, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, has been nominated to fill the spot as Air Force acquisition secretary, but has not been confirmed.

The move is the first by Kendall, who formerly served as Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics, in trying to wrestle the Byzantine space acquisition bureaucracy into something more streamlined.

The Air Force was recently put under notice that lawmakers are becoming impatient on the lack of real movement on the issue — which was one of the key rationales for the creation of Space Force in the first place. The House Appropriations Committee sent a shot across the bow last month in its fiscal 2022 budget bill, excoriating the service for what is sees as simply moving the deck chairs on the Titanic.

In particular, the HAC ripped the reorganization of the Space Force’s acquisition office into Space Systems Command, writing that the plan consists “primarily of renaming the Space and Missile Systems Center and incorporating existing space launch units. The plan does not resolve the fundamental issues of overlap and duplication in roles, responsibilities, and authorities among the various other space acquisition units.”

The lawmakers also charged that Space Force lacks a coherent, evidenced-based plan for the future space architecture — i.e. the overarching configuration of the various US military space systems fielded for various missions, from communications to missile warning to positioning, navigation and timing.

The 2020 National Defense Authorization Act required that the Air Force appoint a Senate-confirmed assistant secretary for space acquisition and integration. That person, the act said, “will “synchronize with the Air Force Service Acquisition Executive on all space system efforts, and take on Service Acquisition Executive responsibilities for space systems and programs effective on October 1, 2022.”

That change is supposed to include folding the Space Development Agency (SDA) into the new office, something that up to now DoD has been resisting. How Kendall decides to handle currently remains unknown.