On the docket for Michael Duffey, the newly installed Pentagon acquisition chief, will be his review and implementation of the closely held recommendations of the DoD Independent Review Team (IRT) for the Space Development Agency’s (SDA) Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA).
The IRT report is also in the hands of Air Force Secretary Troy Meink and Chief of Space Operations Gen. B. Chance Saltzman.
Chaired by former House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry (R-Texas), IRT members have included Tina Harrington, who has worked as the signals intelligence director for the National Reconnaissance Office; Randall Walden, a consultant who headed the Department of the Air Force’s rapid capabilities office (RCO), which had signature programs, such as the B-21 Raider, under the RCO purview; and Sarah Mineiro, a senior associate with the Center for Strategic and International Studies’ Aerospace Security Project and Thornberry’s former staffer on military space (Defense Daily, March 10). Mineiro also worked as the senior director of space strategy at Anduril Industries.
Originally to start launch last September, SDA’s Tranche 1 satellites–the first to connect military forces in the field–are to begin orbiting late this summer, as SDA works to integrate them with ground systems.
Earlier this year, DoD said that SDA has met the “minimum viable product” (MVP) standard for the PWSA Tranche 0 Transport Layer communications satellites and Tracking Layer missile warning satellites, but a Government Accountability Office (GAO) report in February said that four evaluated contractors for the Tranche 0 satellites have only met standards four times out of 32 in eight optical communications terminal (OCT) categories (Defense Daily, Feb. 27).
SpaceX hit the mark three times–in the category of Tracking Layer space-to-space laser links among SpaceX satellites in the same orbital plane, Tracking Layer space-to-space data transmission among SpaceX satellites in the same orbital plane, and Tracking Layer space-to-ground laser links.
York Space Systems passed muster in the Transport Layer space-to-space laser links among York satellites, while Lockheed Martin [LMT] and L3Harris Technologies [LHX] did not hit any of the marks, according to the GAO report, Laser Communications: Space Development Agency Should Create Links Between Development Phases (GAO 25-106838).
GAO said that an example of MVC would be the amount of global coverage expected for a satellite constellation, while MVP would be the number of satellites required to provide such coverage.
OCT laser links among satellites built by different companies has been a point of concern and one that DoD has sought to alleviate with the Enterprise Management and Control effort (Defense Daily, March 19, 2024).
SDA developed an OCT standard of 2.5 gigabits per second data transmission–“relatively lower than some commercial technologies that transmit data at 100 gigabits per second,” according to GAO.
SDA said that its Tranche 0 satellites were not meant to be operationally tested and that it is working with industry and the DoD Directorate of Operational Test and Evaluation to test the Tranche 1 satellites.
“We appreciate that GAO included SDA among their reviews; we are considering their recommendations and will determine how we comply with the spirit of the report,” SDA wrote in an email in response to questions on GAO’s February report. “However, the primary recommendation made in the report about our work disregards SDA’s spiral development model, which is applied specifically to accelerate delivery of capabilities to the warfighter. Spiral development relies upon advances in the commercial market to make iterative improvements to technology in future generations of the architecture.”
Implementation of the IRT recommendations may begin soon. Before Duffey came to the helm, acting DoD acquisition chief Steve Morani gave the go ahead for U.S. Space Force to implement them.
Duffey, nominated by President Trump for the DoD acquisition chief position last Dec. 22, served as the associate director for national security programs in the White House Office of Management and Budget during Trump’s first term. Duffey also served in DoD for 14 years and led transition efforts at the Pentagon after last November’s elections.
Before the Senate approval of Duffey on a 51 to 46 vote on Tuesday to lead the DoD acquisition office, Sen. Jack Reed (D-R.I.), the ranking member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, said in a speech on the Senate floor on Monday that he has “serious doubts about Mr. Duffey’s ability to run this critical function of our government.”
“Furthermore, in 2019, Mr. Duffey played a key role in the scandal that led to President Trump’s first impeachment: withholding military aid from Ukraine to extort information on Mr. Trump’s political opponents,” Reed said. “While serving as a top official in the Office of Management and Budget, Mr. Duffey directed the Pentagon to withhold $250 million from the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative while Mr. Trump simultaneously demanded that President Zelenskyy hand over any information he had about Mr. Biden’s family.”
Reed continued that Duffey “coauthored a chapter for the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025 that suggested federal procurement policy should be used to attack so-called woke policies in corporate America.”
“It is not hard to imagine how Mr. Duffey could use his position as the head of the largest acquisition organization in the world to weaponize federal funding against private corporations that he and President Trump disagree with politically,” Reed said.