Space Force to implement Santa’s ‘naughty list’ of contractors for under-performance

WASHINGTON — The Department of the Air Force has instituted a number of new oversight tools to ensure against delays and cost overruns in space programs — one of which is the as-yet unused Contractor Responsibility Watch List (CRWL) to put underperforming contractors in the penalty box, according to space acquisition czar Frank Calvelli.

“It’s basically … Santa’s ‘naughty list,’ he told the Potomac Officers Club today.

If contractors are put on the CRWL for failure to meet cost and schedule performance goals, he explained, the Space Force has “the ability at that point not to award them any new contracts.”

One key to using CRWL to get failing programs back on track, Calvelli said, is that vendors are given a clear idea of what they need to do to get back off of the list, including specific programmatic milestones to be met. “That’s sort of a real incentive for folks to actually get their act together,” he said.

While the Space Force’s primary acquisition command, Space Systems Command, was mandated to use the CRWL as an oversight tool in the 2018 National Defense Authorization Act, it did not sign out internal procedures for doing so until March 2022 [PDF]. And to his knowledge, Calvelli said, no contractors yet have been listed despite the fact that a number of space acquisition efforts are behind schedule and over budget.

“As far as I can tell, we haven’t used it quite yet,” Calvelli said.

Calvelli also said he has set up a number new, robust practices to establish performance metrics for acquisition programs and check up to make sure those metrics are being hit — oversight measures that could be used to justify listing a contractor not making the grade.

This new oversight regime, in turn, could be used as the basis for deciding what contractors end up on CRWL.

“As the Space Service Acquisition Executive, I conduct reviews with each of my portfolio leads (Program Executive Officers) every two weeks to discuss the status of programs within their purview. I also hold Quarterly Program Reviews for a deeper program analysis. During these quarterly reviews, the government program managers present the technical, schedule, cost, and staffing status, open risks and issues, upcoming activities, and an overall assessment of program health,” he said in written remarks to the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee on Wednesday.

“Based on the data from the quarterlies to date — the latest in February 2023 — we identified a few troubled programs to track more closely. For those programs, I require each selected program to provide a biweekly update on progress against a detailed schedule to get to a healthy status.”

Calvelli is capturing those reviews in an internal “scorecard” that ranks programs’ performance using a “stoplight” concept — with green representing all goals met, yellow representing no serious problems, and red representing failure to meet requirements. As first reported by Breaking Defense, he issued his first such scorecard earlier this month to Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall. (Kendall oversees both the Space Force and the Air Force.)

Rep. Doug Lamborn, R-Colo, who chairs the HASC strategic forces subcommittee, expressed concerns during Wednesday’s hearing that a report to Congress from Calvelli based on the performance scorecard shows little progress on a handful of space acquisition programs that have been long-plagued with problems in reaching fruition.

“We recently received a report from you that identified the five highest and lowest performing major acquisition programs in the Space Force. Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like much has changed in this report. The lowest performing programs are all ground systems led by the perennial underperformer, the [GPS Next Generation Operational Control System] or OCX,” he said.

OCX has had a troubled history, to say the least — including a serious Nunn-McCurdy breach back in 2016. It was originally supposed to become operational in the 2011-2012 timeframe. The program suffered yet another delay early this year, which has forced Space Systems Command to rejigger the planned delivery of the software-based system from April to an as-yet undetermined time — potentially before the end of the year.

“It’s been said many times at this point, that it’s now a cliche, but ground systems always seem to be the afterthought when it comes to space acquisitions. Ground systems are the nuts and bolts, the bread and butter that make our exquisite satellite capabilities function. We cannot have one without the other,” Lamborn continued.

Calvelli, in response, largely agreed.

“I recognize that I inherited several troubled programs that are behind schedule and overrun on cost, I am paying close attention to those programs,” he said, noting that one of his nine tenets for improving space acquisition issued last fall is “deliver ground systems before launch.”

Further, Calvelli in a January 24 speech pledged to get OCX and another perennial space acquisition problem child, the the Military GPS User Equipment (MGUe) effort to provide radios capable of receiving the encrypted M-Code signal designed to avoid jamming, delivered by the end of the year.

To that end, Calvelli reassured Lamborn that Space Systems Command is addressing the issues — noting that the congressman would be able to see the forward momentum when he visits the command’s Los Angeles headquarters.

“They’ve done some really great work on some ground systems, that if you can believe that. They’ve done some really outstanding work in terms of where they’re heading with GPS and how that program has progressing,” Calvelli said.

Lamborn and his Democratic counterpart, Rep. Seth Moulton, D-Mass., will travel to Space Systems Command on Monday for briefings.