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Stakeholders in the Air Force are moving ahead with plans to flesh out the newly established Space Force’s acquisition processes.
To that end, an Architecture Enterprise Summit is expected to occur in mid-February, said Shawn Barnes, deputy principal assistant to the secretary of the Air Force for Space, and a member of the team standing up the office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration.
“The summit will bring together key organizations with architecture responsibilities to define a common lexicon, address architecture roles and responsibilities, and facilitate an integrated national security space architecture,” he said in a Jan. 24 meeting, according to a readout received by Defense Daily on Tuesday. The goal for the office in the next six months will be to develop a single department-wide architecture for the space-based elements of missile warning and missile defense capabilities, he added.
The Space Force was established Dec. 20, 2019, and the service’s leader, Chief of Space Operations Gen. John “Jay” Raymond, was sworn in earlier this month.
Barnes said his team’s current “three buckets of work” included directly supporting Raymond in the standup of the new service and formally establishing the office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration with a Senate-confirmed leader, which was a key stipulation of the fiscal year 2020 National Defense Authorization Act’s approval of the Space Force. The third bucket involved continuing the work his team has performed in the space domain on an ongoing basis, including meeting with allied and coalition partner stakeholders to find holistic solutions to challenges in space using various national capabilities.
A newly established Space Force Acquisition Council is expected to meet next month as well, Barnes said. “My intent would be to meet in February to review a charter and provide an initial look at an alternative acquisition system for space,” he said.
The official said he “absolutely” believes that a review of the portfolios handled by the Space Development Agency, Space and Missile Systems Center and Space Rapid Capabilities Office will occur once the new assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration is in place.
“In fact, we’ve already begun this effort,” he noted. Plans are in place for the new secretary to assign capability development across those three acquisition organizations once they are established. “There may be areas where we want developmental overlap, competition, or alternative approaches between and among acquisition centers – but we should do this in a purposeful manner,” he said. “We must avoid inadvertent redundancy in our capability development and we must assure we make best use of our people, our time, and the taxpayers’ dollars.”
Officials have previously said there is no deadline on when a new assistant secretary will be selected, and Barnes said Monday that there was no update on the process.
