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The Air Force’s decision to pick Huntsville, Alabama, as the new headquarters of U.S. Space Command has been controversial from the start. And a new review by the Government Accountability Office says the selection process had a lot of problems. GAO doesn’t opine on whether Huntsville was the right or wrong decision. But the office says the Air Force made some fundamental missteps when it deviated from its own base selection framework. Instead, the ad hoc version it used for the Space Command selection had serious credibility and transparency problems. Elizabeth Field is director of Defense Capability and Management Issues at GAO. And she joined the Federal Drive with Tom Temin to talk more about the findings.

Interview transcript:

Jared Serbu: Elizabeth, thanks for doing this. And before we dive into the bulk of the report, I want to set this up a bit by just pointing out to listeners that there is kind of two different versions of this report. The publicly releasable one does not have as much detail in it, because the Defense Department considered a lot of those facts and figures to be privileged and did not want them in the final report. First of all, how unusual is that in the context of this sort of information, and then maybe you could describe a little bit to us what’s not in the final report?

Elizabeth Field: Sure. It’s it’s not that unusual for us to issue two versions of a report, one that is sensitive or even classified, that is available to members of Congress, and then one that is fully unclassified and available to the public. And it’s certainly not unusual. And in a situation like this one, where we were looking at a very sensitive strategic basing decision for the department to designate information as being sensitive. In this case, some of the information that we have had to omit from the report includes things like the number and names of candidates that the Air Force would have considered under an amended enterprise definition. Certainly some of the specific numerical candidate scores and rankings, that the Air Force concluded where their rankings during part of the process have been omitted. And also certain input to some deliberations that happened before a meeting at the White House in January 2021, that we talked about in our report. So those are just a few examples.

Jared Serbu: Got it. I just wanted to make that clear before we dig into the meat here. Okay. And then as far as the meat, essentially, as I understand what’s going on here is Space Command basically borrowed the Air Force’s strategic basing process and then sort of partway through the Air Force modified that process, essentially, at the direction of the Secretary of Defense. Have I got that about right?

Elizabeth Field: Pretty much. So the Air Force does have an instruction. It’s called an Air Force instruction, that guides strategic basic decisions. And it was a process that it was following for the most part, up until about March 2020. Then to your point, then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper directed the Air Force to reopen the process and revise the process to model the Army’s future command basing process that it had used. I should note that that process was also not consistent with an existing policy. So there really wasn’t policy that the Air Force was or could follow at that point. The memo from Secretary Esper essentially superseded the Air Force instruction.

Jared Serbu: But I think the point here is that the Air Force could still have built a process or followed a process that used all of the best practices that GAO’s identified whenever you’re doing any kind of analysis of alternatives. And you found some serious shortcomings there. You want to briefly take us through what those were?

Elizabeth Field: Sure, well, and first, I want to very much affirm your question about whether the Air Force still could have followed best practices? And the answer is absolutely. And in fact, that’s the reason that GAO created these best practices back in 2016. We recognize that there was not a broadly recognized set of guidelines that federal government agencies or even private sector entities could use to help consider different options and alternatives when they were faced with a question like the one that the Air Force was faced with in this instance. So we applied what we call our analysis of alternatives criteria to the Air Force’s process for selecting the SPACECOM-preferred location. And what we found, were quite a number of weaknesses. So those criteria that I just mentioned, are grouped into four characteristics of a high quality, reliable process. And those characteristics are comprehensive, well documented, credible, and unbiased.

And we went through a fairly methodical approach of applying our criteria where we actually come up with a numerical score that we can give to the Air Force for each of those characteristics. And what we found is that the Air Force substantially met the comprehensive characteristics. So in that case, there were some good things that the Air Force did, but it only partially met The well documented and unbiased characteristics, and it minimally met the credible characteristic. And just to give you a few examples of some of the problems that we identified, the Air Force changed the definition of some of the criteria that it used over time as it was trying to evaluate the candidate locations. The Air Force also changed how it was weighting different criteria, which is important because you want to maintain however you are weighting different criteria across the board. There was no independent review conducted of the process, which typically the Air Force would do, and so on, and so forth. So there really were quite a lot of problems.

Jared Serbu: I wonder to what extent if at all, the Air Force deserves a bit of a pass here in the sense that they were directed to deviate from what would have been their normal practice, again, by the secretary, in a pretty heavily politicized environment, and in a situation that’s really kind of a one-off for them, right? Because they’re not making a basing decision for one of their own bases. They’re acting as the executive agent for someone else. There’s a lot of uniqueness about this event that in some ways, it’s understandable that they would deviate from their own processes, isn’t it?

Elizabeth Field: Well, it’s certainly understandable that they might deviate from their own process. I think where things went south is that in doing so, they made some mistakes that are really pretty fundamental problems that if you don’t have those sort of boxes checked, you’re gonna have a problem at the end of the day. But that is why we, our recommendation in this report is that moving forward, the Air Force, establish guidance that is consistent with our practices that it can apply to future basing decisions such as this one, so that it doesn’t run into the same problems that it did this time around.

Jared Serbu: Well one thing I do want to make clear is it didn’t seem like any of the people that you talked to, or that were stakeholders in this process, had the sense that Huntsville was a bad choice in the end. It was always considered among the top tier of possible locations for Space Command. So whatever one thinks of the process and how the Air Force got there, there’s not really a risk, that Space Command is going to end up in a bad place for its needs. Is that fair?

Elizabeth Field: That is fair. So there are six final candidate locations, all of them are considered what is termed reasonable alternatives to the selected location, meaning, any of those six the Air Force has determined could meet the mission need.

Jared Serbu: But the process is still problematic, right? And I think you make this point in your conclusion that the public needs to have confidence that the process is sound, so that things don’t go off the rails next time and where a bad choice really could be made.

Elizabeth Field: That’s right. I mean, ideally, even if someone disagrees with the final decision and doesn’t like the location that was picked for reasons that are pretty obvious, they should still have competence that the process was handled appropriately and responsibly. And that just didn’t happen here.

Jared Serbu: What more specifically, could the Air Force do? I mean, did they need to design and write down a process that is tailorable for something like this, where they’re called upon to go outside of the way they would normally use a basing process for their own bases, for their own needs?

Elizabeth Field: Well, our best practices that we recommend they adopt in guidance for future processes allow for tailoring to whatever the question is that you’re approaching. And so, and this is really important to point out, a certain amount of professional judgment is always going to be part of any process like this, and our criteria account for that. So it’s really more about making sure that you have a methodology that you have clearly defined from the outset that you don’t deviate from, in the middle of the process, that you clearly document, the assumptions that you’ve made, the methodology that you’re using, the decisions that you’re making along the way. And then you do things like having an independent review to ensure impartiality, and conducting something called a sensitivity review, where you test the assumptions in your model and see how changes to those assumptions affect your outcomes. The Air Force really didn’t do any of those things.

Jared Serbu: And I think maybe this is just a piece that’s not in the final report. But I think one of the big missing pieces were cost differentials between possible alternatives, how much they would save or spend if they went with a different location.

Elizabeth Field: That’s right. So one of our best practices is that the body that is conducting the process considered sort of full lifecycle costs of whatever the decision is that they’re trying to make. And we found that there were some costs that were not considered at all, such as any cost that might be incurred for relocation of Space Command. Right now it is provisionally located at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado. So those costs weren’t considered, maintenance of infrastructure costs were not considered. We also found that there were costs that the Air Force just couldn’t document how they calculated them. So there’s something called high altitude, electromagnetic pulse shielding. It’s also known as hemp shielding. And it’s really important though, because it protects communications technology from high intense energy attack, essentially. And the Air Force told us they had some experts who came up with those cost estimates, but they couldn’t show us where that was documented. So all of those things are problematic.

Jared Serbu: Elizabeth, pretty strong language in this report by GAO standards, and you found what you’ve talked about are serious problems. Why is there not a recommendation here for the Air Force to go back and redo its work the right way?

Elizabeth Field: Well, I appreciate that question. And there are a couple of answers to that. The first and most important here is that that is ultimately a judgment call. It is a policy call. And GAO is not a policymaking body. This decision has not yet been finalized. And so it is up to the Air Force, along with Congress and others to weigh the costs and benefits of potentially redoing the process. The second reason is, we did not in this report seek to validate the decision that the Air Force made. We don’t suggest whether the Air Force made the “correct decision” or not, or even whether the Air Force would have come to a different conclusion had it fully applied our best practices. And so the lack of a recommendation to redo the process should not be taken as an endorsement of Redstone Arsenal as the preferred location, or denigration of Redstone Arsenal as the preferred location.

Jared Serbu: And I guess that brings up one last question, which is, would it be possible for the Air Force to work backwards here a little bit? Fill in some of the missing data, do some of the the legwork that wasn’t done as part of the process in order to solve some of the credibility and transparency problems that you identified without going all the way back to the beginning? Or is the problem just that the data doesn’t exist and can’t be recreated at this point?

Elizabeth Field: Well, it’s certainly the case that some of the data cannot be recreated. When we tried to collect the documentation that the Air Force had compiled to do the analysis. We weren’t able to collect it in many cases, either because it never existed, or because it had been lost. The Air Force pointed to a software update that caused them to lose some of their documentation. I think it also would be hard to ameliorate all of the problems that we found with this process, because some of them were there from the beginning, for example, not clearly defining criteria, and so it would be hard to go back and do that.

Space Systems Command (SSC) is adopting a “buy first, build last” approach to acquisition for space products in hopes of rolling them out faster than relying on the military’s slower procurement system to remake the wheel.

The organization stood up its Commercial Services Office at the beginning of the year with the goal of reaching out to industry to find out what kinds of data and services are already available in the commercial sector that DoD and the Space Force can use.

“Can we find other ways of doing GPS or precision, navigation and timing through the commercial market?” said Joy White, executive director of SSC’s contracting activity, during a speech at the Government Contract Pricing Summit. “Can we buy weather capability because we still build weather satellites? Can we buy weather capability services without having to go build something unique? So those are all in play as part of our Commercial Services Office.”

SSC is not only interested in how commercial companies can help, however. White said U.S. allies have been an integral part of building the space infrastructure. After looking in the private sector, White said the Space Force is turning to its partners to grab products that are already available instead of creating something new.

“We’ve got multiple countries partnering with us,” White said. “We’re working with the Japanese to put one of our space domain awareness payloads on one of their GPS satellites. They’re getting ready to build out their own global positioning system, but they have room on one of their satellite buses to house other payloads.”

The U.S. is putting a payload on a satellite that Norway is launching as well. White said DoD expects to save $900 million by putting the payload on Norway’s satellite instead of doing a launch of its own.

SSC is working with allies on electromagnetic spectrum, intelligence, reconnaissance and surveillance and other areas as well. Currently the U.S. has 58 partnerships with about $3 billion in allied investments.

If SSC cannot find what it needs from industry or from its allies, then the command will look into acquisition, White said.

SCC is not following traditional defense acquisition rules, though. The technologies for space move on a much faster timeline. White said SSC has been utilizing mid-tier acquisition and a consortium to connect with industry quickly and get contracts moving.

“The mid-tier acquisition has really helped us to streamline how we do our satellite builds,” White said. “I’m in the command where we’re doing the acquisition. I’m very familiar with what contracting activity is doing and what acquisitions are going on. It’s much easier for me to then approve things that come through because I already know about what’s going on. There’s not a teaching timeframe to explain why I need to approve something as a head of contracting activity.”

White said another part of making procurement faster is creating a solid “front door” for industry. SSC is trying to be as accessible as possible to nontraditional businesses. It’s also created a consortium that companies can join to make it easier to connect with SSC.

The Government Accountability Office says the service missed some serious best practices in its decision to move SPACECOM from Colorado Springs, Colorado to Huntsville, Alabama. The move provoked Congressional claims of foul play the Trump administration and a Defense Department Inspector General’s investigation.

The GAO report, which the organization released Thursday, states that the Air Force only followed seven of the 21 analysis of alternatives best practices, who the watchdog says can “help increase transparency and avoid the presence or appearance of bias.”

GAO said the Air Force’s process of selecting Huntsville led to significant shortfalls in its transparency and credibility.

“Air Force officials told GAO they did not use the analysis of alternatives best practices as a guide during the revised process because the practices were not required or relevant to basing decisions,” the authors of the report wrote. “However, GAO believes that the analysis of alternatives best practices are relevant and, if effectively implemented, can help ensure such basing decisions are transparent and deliberate.”

The criteria is based on four categories judging how comprehensive, well-documented, credible and unbiased the decision was in the Air Force’s process.

The service got the best marks for being comprehensive by defining mission need, developing alternatives and assessing their viability.

The worst assessments came in the credibility section. The Air Force failed to include confidence levels, life-cycle cost estimates and did not perform an independent review.

“While the January 2021 selection of Redstone Arsenal as the preferred location for U.S. Space Command headquarters was consistent with the Air Force’s analysis, our assessment of the Air Force’s revised selection process and attendant analysis against our analysis of alternative best practices identified significant shortfalls in its transparency and credibility,” the GAO authors wrote.

GAO, much like DoD IG, is recommending that the Air Force come up with guidance for how it will objectively select bases in the future.

Members of the Colorado Congressional delegation said the GAO report confirms their concerns about the basing decision.

“Over the past year, we’ve repeatedly raised concerns that the previous administration used a flawed, untested, and inconsistent process to select a location for SPACECOM,” they wrote. “The reports from the GAO and the DoD IG both confirm that the basing process lacked integrity and neglected key national security considerations.”

They go on to say that they urge the Biden administration, along with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to review the findings and make a decision that prioritizes national security.

The DoD IG report on the basing decision stated that it complied with federal law.

The report said 21 of the criteria used by Basing Office officials to choose the headquarters, 18 were reasonable. However, eight of those criteria could not be fully verified when it came to ranking the best locations for the headquarters.

However, all of the information going in-depth as to why Huntsville was chosen over other locations and the points the location accrued compared to other possible spots is redacted from the report.

The issue of whether there should be a Space National Guard has gone back and forth between Defense officials and lawmakers for the past couple years. Now, legislators are making moves to establish a part-time component for the new service.

A bipartisan coalition of lawmakers are introducing a bill in both houses to create a Space National Guard. The effort led by Sens. Diane Feinstein (D-Calif.), Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) and Rep. Jason Crow (D-Colo.) would ensure a pipeline for guardians to work part-time and move between active duty and the Guard.

It would eliminate the need for the Space Force to route funding between it and the Air Force, and would allow the Space Force more control over Guard members who work on space functions.

Currently there are more than 1,000 Air National Guard members who perform space missions.

“Without a National Guard component for Space Force, we risk losing many talented individuals who want to keep serving their country and their states after they leave active duty, and that is simply unacceptable,” Feinstein said. “Creating a Space Force National Guard would also save money and ensure a smoother process in the event we need to activate personnel. Not establishing a Space National Guard was a mistake when Space Force was created, and this bill will remedy that.”

Not everyone is convinced that a Space National Guard is the best idea, however. Kaitlyn Johnson, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, tweeted last Friday that she thinks the component is a bad idea.

“Why would a governor ever need satellite operators to support their state/local issues? The argument that people are already doing this is not a good one — sounds like a realignment issue and not a ‘Let’s just create another bureaucratic org,’” she wrote. “What happened to the Space Force being new/revolutionary/unique? What happened to redefining how we support the space mission? Seems to me like Feinstein and Rubio are forcing the opposite values that the USSF was established on to get more money for their states.”

The Space Force itself isn’t so sure it wants a traditional Guard component. Service officials floated the idea of a “space component” last month during a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, which would be a hybrid structure merging full- and part-time guardians.

Chief of Space Operations Gen. Jay Raymond described it as the service’s number one legislative priority.

“You could keep the Guard units in the Air National Guard and have the Air National Guard continue to provide support,” Raymond said. “Option two is you could take the men and women out of the Air National Guard and set up a separate Space National Guard. Or you can take those capabilities out of the Guard totally and put them in this one component.” — SM

Air Force missing out on DoD’s colorless money software pilots

As part of its 2023 budget, the Air Force is making a serious effort at getting in on the Defense Department’s effort to prove that budgeting for software development is very, very different from budgeting for traditional weapons systems.

As of now, the Air Force is the only military service that’s not participating in DoD’s Software and Digital Technology Pilot Program at all. And the vast majority of the Pentagon’s overall proposed increase for 2023 within the pilot effort is explained by Air Force requests to change that. The service has teed up eight potential candidates for Congressional consideration.

Under the program sometimes called the “Budget Activity 8” pilot, DoD components are allowed to use “colorless” money for software development, without having to worry about whether the phase of development they’re in should be funded by R&D, procurement or operations accounts. Critics have long argued that funding construct, intended for weapons system development, makes no sense for software and simply bogs down efforts toward agile development.

Andrew Hunter, the recently-confirmed assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, technology and logistics, said his discovery that the Air Force wasn’t participating in the pilot caused him “dismay” when he assumed the new role.

“But it’s not from lack of interest,” he said during a conference hosted by the Naval Postgraduate School last week. “The Air Force submitted several candidates [in past years] to be part of the software pilot program, but we were unsuccessful in the competition for being selected. I’m rueful that we aren’t doing it. And it’s maybe slightly ironic, because I’d like to think the Air Force was a leading voice in making the case for the flexibilities required to do effective software development.”

The pilot program is only in its second year, but so far, Congress hasn’t shown overwhelming enthusiasm toward expanding it. Lawmakers didn’t approve the addition of any new programs between fiscal 2021 and fiscal 2022. The House Appropriations Committee’s version of the 2022 bill would have expanded the program, but its Senate counterpart never approved a Defense spending bill of its own.

Overall, for 2023, the Defense budget proposal would place $1.785 billion worth of DoD software programs in the BA-8 pilot, up from the $742 million Congress approved for this year. The vast majority of that increase would come from the Air Force’s proposed additions, which total $946 million.

The programs include:

• Strategic Mission Planning and Execution System ($100 million)
• Air & Space Operations Center ($178 million)
• Defense Enterprise Accounting and Management System ($136 million)
• Distributed Cyber Warfare Operations ($37 million)
• Air Force Defensive Cyber Systems ($241 million)
• All Domain Common Platform ($190 million)
• Air Force Weather Programs ($58 million)
• Electronic Warfare Integrated Reprogramming ($6 million)

—JS

USS George Washington deaths on Austin’s radar

The tragic events aboard the aircraft carrier USS George Washington are catching the attention of the nation’s top Defense official.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin told lawmakers last week he was concerned about the three suicides aboard the ship last month and the five in total over the past year.

“This is a really, really important issue,” Austin told the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee. “That’s why we’re asking you for, in this budget, additional resources to help us provide greater access to our troops which includes telehealth care opportunities as well.”

About 400 sailors were living aboard the USS George Washington as it is being repaired in Newport News, Virginia. The Navy is now moving more than 250 sailors off the ship for mental health purposes and is looking at moving all the sailors to short.

“There are choices that have been made or will be made in the future in terms of how billet sailors when that repair is ongoing,” Austin said. Whether or not we made the right choices is left to be seen. Certainly there’s a problem there, we got to understand what that problem was a bit more and then we have to figure out what to do to ensure that we don’t have these kinds of problems in the future.”

Austin is waiting on two investigations from the Navy on the climate and command aboard the ship. The maintenance is taking longer than expected and the ship will be docked for another year. It was supposed to be finished this year.

“For hundreds of those sailors they have no access to housing or a car and they’re stuck on a ship. This is really demoralizing,” Rep. Marcy Kaptur (D-Ohio) said. “I am troubled by the Defense submission on the Navy because I see it getting worse. I just wanted to point a flashlight at this part of the budget and say, we got to do something and I’m not sure what it is.”

There have been seven deaths in the last year among the 2,700 sailors working aboard the ship as it is overhauling at a shipyard in Newport News, Virginia.

Five of those deaths are apparent suicides, three of which were in the space of one week last month, leading the service and others to wonder about the mental health among the Nimitz-class carrier.

The Navy is already taking some steps to address mental health concerns. It has embossed a 13-person special psychiatric rapid intervention team to provide services from April 16-19. The ship also added an additional clinical psychologist and social worker. Sailors are being given expedited appointments with mental health services on shore in Hampton Roads. Telehealth options are also available.

NBC News reported that the Navy is offering other morale boosting activities like a video game competition and soccer tournament.

However, sailors told NBC that morale remains low and some feel that the efforts are too little, too late.

Late last month, Rep. Elaine Luria (D-Va.) sent a letter to Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Michael Gilday asking for answers on conditions and climate aboard the ship.

“I am calling on the Department of Defense, the Department of the Navy, and CNO Gilday to provide the House Armed Services Committee and members of Congress with a full accounting of what steps are being taken to address command climate, safety concerns, mental health, and other issues that may have contributed to this tragic loss of life on USS George Washington,” she said. “Every member of our armed forces must be treated with respect, and we have an obligation to ensure that our active-duty personnel on USS George Washington and around the world are being heard and supported while serving our country.” — SM

After some controversy, a government watchdog said the decision to move U.S. Space Command headquarters to Huntsville, Alabama, was reasonable and complied with the law. However, important details as to why the location was chosen remain redacted in the report, leaving much of the Defense Department’s rationale for the decision still undisclosed to the public.

“We determined that, overall, the basing action process directed by the Secretary of Defense complied with federal law and DoD policy, and the Air Force complied with the Defense secretary’s requirements for the basing action, though the Basing Office personnel did not fully comply with Air Force records retention requirements,” the authors of the DoD Inspector General report wrote.

SPACECOM is the combatant command responsible for military operations outside of the Earth’s atmosphere.

The report goes on to say that out of the 21 criteria used by Basing Office officials to choose the headquarters, 18 were reasonable. However, eight of those criteria could not be fully verified when it came to ranking the best locations for the headquarters.

Those criteria included things like having an available qualified workforce, communication bandwidth, support to military families and considerations for cost to DoD.

However, all of the information going in-depth as to why Huntsville was chosen over other locations and the points the location accrued compared to other possible spots is redacted.

One sentence reads:

“We interviewed the SPACECOM, who told us that his office coordinated with Basing Office personnel to ensure consideration of the SPACECOM requirements in the four evaluation factors and 21 associated criteria. For example, the SPACECOM told us that [redacted].”

Whole charts breaking down the comparisons of the bases as a headquarters and scoring them from 1 to 100, are blacked out in the report.

While the conclusion seems to absolve DoD and the Air Force of favoring Huntsville, the transparency within the report doesn’t do much in terms of explaining how DoD came to its conclusion.

Members of the Colorado delegation were concerned by the decision to choose Huntsville and denounced the decision based saying it was chosen for political reasons. The report doesn’t speculate on how much political weight was thrown around.

Sens. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) and John Hickenlooper, (D-Colo.) said they are reviewing the findings of the report.

“We will have more to share in the coming days. Our position remains that the previous administration used a basing process for U.S. Space Command that was untested, lacked transparency, and neglected critical national security and cost considerations,” the wrote. “Chief among those concerns is Peterson Space Force Base’s singular ability to reach Full Operational Capability as quickly as possible. Space Command should remain permanently based at Peterson Space Force Base in Colorado.”

There is also a Government Accountability Office report forthcoming on the issue. The senators saw a draft of that report in April.

“We have said before that the U.S. Space Command basing decision was the result of a flawed and untested process that lacked transparency and neglected key national security and cost considerations,” they wrote. “After reviewing the draft GAO report, we are even more concerned about the questionable decision to move U.S. Space Command from Colorado to Alabama.”

The contention over the SPACECOM headquarters started after some lawmakers suspected foul play by the Trump administration of favoring Huntsville after the military seemed to want to make Colorado Springs, Colorado, the headquarters.

The former president even said last summer that he picked Huntsville as the location because he loves Alabama.

Top military officials said in January 2021 that they wanted Colorado Springs as the headquarters’ home based on best military judgement, even though the location ranked fifth in the final scoring provided to the inspector general.

Colorado Springs is home to U.S. Northern Command and much of the military’s space assets. The interim headquarters are also in Colorado Springs. It seemed like a logical decision to place SPACECOM there.

The final rankings put Huntsville first; followed by Albuquerque, New Mexico; Bellevue, Washington and San Antonio, Texas. Cape Canaveral came in sixth.

The inspector general is recommending that DoD put in place a solid policy for choosing combatant command locations to avoid these issues in the future.

DENVER — The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency is evaluating the progress of “Project Maven” as it prepares to take over the artificial intelligence initiative and integrate it with a broader range of efforts to apply machine learning to geospatial intelligence.

The Biden administration is proposing to shift Project Maven to NGA as part of its fiscal year 2023 budget request. The program has been run out of the office of secretary of defense since its inception in 2017.

NGA Director Vice Adm. Robert Sharp said the agency would be “calling on industry” with regards to the Project Maven transition in the coming months. The agency has repeatedly stressed in recent years that it will need to use artificial intelligence and machine learning to process and analyze the fast growing amount of satellite imagery and other GEOINT data available from both government and commercial sources.

“We want to move forward together, so we can deliver GEOINT at the pace that our warfighters and decision makers need,” Sharp said during a Monday keynote address at the GEOINT conference here. “We have to be able to keep up with rapidly emerging digital trends. We have to be able to accelerate our ability to provide detections at the speed of mission, to give our customers tactical, operational and strategic advantage.”

NGA has been a partner to Project Maven since it started, helping to provide imagery and other data necessary for companies to train their algorithms, according to Mark Munsell, NGA’s deputy director of data and digital innovation.

And NGA has also been working on computer vision and machine learning projects, according to Munsell. He said NGA can “bonus off all the things” Project Maven has learned over the past five years and integrate the software projects into its own infrastructure.

“It makes a lot of sense to bring these things together,” Munsell said during a Tuesday media roundtable with reporters on the sidelines of GEOINT. “Doesn’t mean that we’ll always operate the same way that Maven has operated. We’ll do a really good assessment of what they’ve done. We bring in our subject matter experts, who are steeped in GEOINT for 30 years, some of the folks. They’re the ultimate customer now to be able to assess utility, assess how we can continue to support our combat support partners in the military, and make modifications moving forward to make it better.”

The agency is also hoping to avoid duplicative efforts, while sharing promising software across the military and intelligence components it supports.

“If you’ve developed an algorithm that goes after certain objects in certain geographies and biomes that is successful, we will capitalize on that as a community and ensure that if someone else in the community needs that, we can provide that as a service to them,” Munsell said.

Military AI pathfinder

Project Maven was established in 2017 “to accelerate DOD’s integration of big data and machine learning,” then-Deputy Defense Secretary Bob Work wrote in a memo at the time. The project fielded its first algorithms for processing images and video captured by surveillance aircraft later that year.

The program served as an AI pathfinder for the Pentagon, preceding the establishment of the Joint AI Center.

It also garnered major headlines in 2018 when thousands of Google engineers protested the company’s involvement in the project. The company ended its involvement, later stating it would not develop AI applications in the areas of weaponry or surveillance.

But Project Maven continued to grow well past the controversy. The Pentagon requested $247 million for the Algorithmic Warfare Cross Functional Teams, aka Project Maven, in fiscal year 2022 after receiving $230 million for the program in FY 21.  It has also been among the programs to pilot the use of a “colorless” software appropriation.

It’s unclear how much the Pentagon is requesting for the program in FY 23 as it shifts to NGA, because the intelligence community’s budget details are classified.

But the Defense Department’s budget documents provide some detail on how Project Maven has advanced in recent years. The program aims to “augment and automate” the processing, exploitation and dissemination for full-motion video feeds from a range of unmanned aerial vehicles, including “WAMI ISR,” which stands for wide-area imagery intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance.”

The program is also fielding AI to automate analysis of military and commercial satellite imagery, according to the documents.

The program has also expanded beyond imagery in recent years. It also uses AI to exploit “CEM,” which stands for “capture enemy material” in intelligence parlance, as well as “maritime” intelligence and “PAI,” or publicly available information.

“Maven’s AI, deep learning, and computer vision algorithms and insights are developed for use in theater to detect, classify, and track objects within images (e.g., persons, vehicles, and weapons) as well as provide other insights, such as with CEM, text-based, and other projects,” the documents state.

NGA is taking over the project’s “GEOINT AI services and capabilities,” according to Sharp, and it’s unclear what will happen to the capabilities the project has created for other categories of intelligence.

With the transition not expected to become effective until Oct. 1, NGA is currently doing the “administrative work” to determine how to transition contracts, as well as get personnel and leadership in place, according to Munsell.

And even as NGA evaluates how Project Maven fits into its broader portfolio, Munsell also emphasized that there will be “no pause” in the project’s ongoing activities.

“The assessment is not a pause,” he said. “It’s our charge, as GEOINT functional manager, to help prioritize, to help others understand the investments, and then with data and statistics, offer opportunities to improve.”

The Defense Department identified it’s two biggest competitors, along with increasing congestion in the area just outside the Earth’s atmosphere as some of the largest threats to the United States’ space interests.

“China and Russia value superiority in space, and as a result, they’ll seek ways to strengthen their space and counterspace programs and determine better ways to integrate them within their respective militaries,” Kevin Ryder, Defense Intelligence Agency senior analyst for space and counterspace, said Tuesday at the Pentagon. “Both nations seek to broaden their space exploration initiatives together and individually with plans to explore the moon and Mars during the next 30 years. If successful, these efforts will likely lead to attempts by Beijing and Moscow to exploit the moon’s natural resources.”

In a new report from the DIA, the organization found that since 2019 competitor space operations have increased in pace and scope across nearly all major categories including communications, remote sensing, navigation, and science and technology demonstration.

Ryder said that China and Russia intend to undercut the United States and its allies in space.

The report states the two nations increased their number of satellites around the Earth by 70% in the last two years.

Other advancements include China landing a rover on Mars and a robotic spacecraft on the dark side of the moon.

“What we’ve seen so far has been more civilian in nature,” Ryder said. “However, China emphasizes in their writings, civil-military integration and dual-use purpose space capabilities. While we do understand that right now, it is civil in nature, we continue to monitor for any possibility of military activity.”

It’s not just competition that DIA is outlining as a threat to U.S. space efforts. The intelligence agency noted that the probability of collisions of massive derelict objects in low earth orbit is growing, and will continue through at least 2030.

“As of January 2022, more than 25,000 objects of at least 10 centimeters in size were tracked and cataloged in Earth’s orbit to include active satellites,” the report states. “The primary risk to spacecraft in orbit is from uncataloged lethal nontrackable debris (LNT), which are objects between 5 millimeters and 10 centimeters in size. An estimated 600,000 to 900,000 pieces of uncataloged LNT are in low earth orbit.”

Looking to the future, the U.S. is now considering deep space operations and the challenges they will present for tracking and monitoring spacecraft.

DoD has outlined space as a crucial domain for the United States. The Pentagon is increasing its investments in space capabilities. The 2023, budget request asks for $27.6 billion for space capabilities, command and control and resilient architectures.

That’s not to mention that Congress and the department set up the Space Force in the last couple years, a military branch solely focused on operations outside of earth.

The Biden administration is asking for the largest ever Space Force budget next year at $24.5 billion.

The resources are a rare step where the Air and Space Forces recognize a hostile environment created by governments in states where the services often send their troops.

Many of the laws and directives, which dissenters call discriminatory, are in more conservative states where the Air and Space Forces have bases including Texas, Alabama and Florida.

“The health, care and resilience of our DAF personnel and their families is not just our top priority — it’s essential to our ability to accomplish the mission,” said Air Force Undersecretary Gina Ortiz Jones. “We are closely tracking state laws and legislation to ensure we prepare for and mitigate effects to our airmen, guardians and their families. Medical, legal resources, and various assistance are available for those who need them.”

The release tells airmen and guardians that if they or their families need help they should start with military health clinics and hospitals.

Another resource, according to the statement, is the Exceptional Family Member Program, which assists families with special needs in medical, legal and educational support.

The Department of the Air Force is also encouraging troops to go to installation legal offices as another means of free support in navigating new laws.

It is not often that the military services’ personnel departments get involved with local laws.

Former Army personnel chief Tammy Smith told Federal News Network that the military offered assistance right after the appeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, a policy where LGBTQ+ service members were not allowed to serve openly.

The Army also provided advice to LGBTQ+ service members before same sex marriage was legal nationally, who were going to states where marriage was legal to wed, and then returning to the state where they resided where it wasn’t legal.

The laws have been controversial even within the Republican party, the predominant political entity introducing the bills.

On Tuesday, Utah Governor Spencer Cox became the second governor in the past week to veto a bill barring transgender athletes from competing girls’ sports. Cox stated his chief concerns were the mental health impacts the bill could have on children.

“I want them to live,” Cox said.

Smith pointed out DoD’s interest in these laws in talking about a new Texas directive that classifies gender affirming treatments for transgender children as child abuse.

“The Defense Department must recognize that the involuntary transfer of service members to Texas places parents of transgender dependent children in peril,” she said. “They may be charged with child abuse by Texas authorities. This impacts not only assignments but professional schooling like the Army Sergeants Major Academy.”

Todd Weiler, former assistant Defense secretary for Manpower and Reserve Affairs and managing partner at Blue Rose Consulting, said the Air Force’s move is good management.

“This is what strong leadership looks like. I have never run into something like what we are experiencing now: local- and state-sanctioned discrimination,” he said. “It is reprehensible and it falls on federal entities, like the Air Force, and commercial businesses to protect the equality of our people.”

Transition for transgender children mostly refers to taking medications that delay puberty. Those medications are extensively studied and are completely reversible, according to the Journal of the Endocrine Society.

Those medications have also shown a reduction in mental health issues for transgender children.

According to the Trevor Project’s annual survey of LGBTQ+ youth mental health, 52% of transgender and nonbinary children contemplated killing themselves in 2020, and 42% of LGBTQ+ youth considered taking their lives.

Three-quarters of those children reported discrimination based on their sexual orientation or gender, and 94% reported recent politics negatively impacted their mental health.

Authors of bills claim that transgender youths are hurting sports or that the medical procedures are “radical social experimentation,” as one Florida state representative put it. However, leading health organizations like the American Medical Association say that empirical evidence shows that transgender and nonbinary identities are normal variations of human identity and expression.

The 2022 appropriations bill President Joe Biden signed last week includes $1.2 billion above and beyond what the military services requested in the spending accounts they use to maintain and repair deteriorating facilities, going some way toward backfilling an infrastructure maintenance hole the Defense Department has been digging for at least a decade.

The final Congressional agreement gave big increases to each of the military departments’ facilities sustainment restoration and modernization (FSRM) accounts, compared to their spending requests. The Army’s appropriation totals $4.5 billion, 11.1% more than it requested. The Navy will have $3.4 billion, 15.4% above its request, and the Air Force received $4.2 billion, 8.7% more than its budget request. Those figures do not include the much smaller amounts set aside for the services’ National Guard and Reserve components.

Although the FSRM accounts are a drop in the bucket in the context of a nearly $730 billion budget, it’s an area where the department has consistently chosen to take “risk” at least since the onset of the spending caps imposed by the Budget Control Act in 2011.

But this year’s budget proposals showed the BCA caps weren’t the only motivator. Despite the caps’ expiration, each service chose to propose spending levels that still would have only covered 80% of the funding needs estimated by DoD’s own Facility Condition Index and Sustainment Management System.

And Defense officials have previously acknowledged those underinvestments have consequences. In a single year, between 2015 and 2016, the number of DoD facilities rated as in “failing” condition rose from 7% of its overall portfolio to 18.9%.

During a House Armed Services Committee hearing on facilities, energy and environmental programs last week, Defense officials did not provide updated estimates on facility conditions.

But in written testimony, Paul Cramer, the principal deputy assistant secretary of Defense for installations, suggested the department is considering a pivot away from the current models it uses to assess facility conditions and building FSRM budgets. He said the new model for facilities spending would move away from assessments of DoD’s overall real property portfolios, and toward a new model that makes more “granular” assessments of each facility.

“It is guiding our transition to an asset management approach for budgeting for and managing the department’s infrastructure that addresses facility investment as a holistic program instead of independent sustainment, restoration and modernization programs,” he said. “As the system is implemented over the next few years, the department intends to set baseline parameters using factors such as mission criticality to set a minimum condition standard on its facilities.”

The Air Force has already made similar moves. Last year, the service began creating an “integrated priorities list” to replace its previous approach to FSRM funding, a “worst-first” approach that put its most deteriorated facilities — usually the most expensive ones to recapitalize — at the front of the line.

It’s possible that a long-term focus on mission criticality could have led to a different outcome in the recent fuel discharge episode that forced DoD to decide to drain and abandon its largest fuel storage facility in the Pacific, the 250-million-gallon storage bunker known as Red Hill.

The latest discharge into Oahu water supply, which sickened nearly 6,000 people and forced some 4,000 military members from their homes, appears to have been the result of operator error. But the facility had leaked fuel into groundwater supplies several times before, and has been subject to a consent order with Hawaii health officials since 2015 to reduce the chance of discharges from the aging facility, first built during World War II.

“Moving forward, DoD’s going to have to focus on this a lot more,” Tim Walton, a fellow and military logistics expert at the Hudson Institute told Federal News Network in an interview about the Red Hill closure decision. “In general, I think the department has tried to avoid recapitalizing these major projects that were built during World War II or the Cold War, just because they’re major expenses and they usually don’t have any large constituencies. It’s easier for members of Congress to point to the ship or the aircraft that’s built in their district. Few people get fired up about fuel tanks.”

There’s now at least a little bit of fire on infrastructure issues.

Rep. John Garamendi (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Readiness Subcommittee warned senior military officials last year that his subcommittee is “not messing around” in its desire to see improvements in the state of DoD’s organic industrial base, such as shipyards and munitions depots.

And last week’s hearing before the same subcommittee included a major focus on Red Hill, where Rep. Kaiali’i Kahele (D-Hawaii) noted that the new appropriations bill also includes $736 million to remediate the environmental damage from the latest discharge, on top of $403 in emergency funding Congress passed several weeks earlier, and is likely to cost the government billions of dollars more before the full extent of the damage is discovered.

“I’ll give you one example: The Red Hill Elementary School, which sits less than a mile from Red Hill, has started to see their toilets leak because the fuel in the water has been eroding the seals in the toilets, and they’ve had to replace them,” he said. “So there’s a lot of expenses out there that have not been reimbursed … and it may be very probable that we may never bring the Red Hill well back online to serve the Navy’s water system. We may need to drill new drinking water wells or to establish new monitoring wells in that area. The Board of Water Supply is already calling for water conservation efforts for individuals in the affected area and also to plan for water restrictions during the summer, so this is something that clearly is not going away.” —JS

Space Force going for digital fitness instead of testing

The Space Force has promised to be the first digital military service and it’s taking that role seriously even in the realm of physical fitness.

This year, the service is piloting a program that uses wearable tech to monitor guardians’ health in lieu of fitness tests.

After the testing, the Space Force said it will take a three-pronged approach at tackling fitness that is data-driven and focused on self-awareness rather than relying on a yearly physical fitness exam.

“It is time we implement a data-driven, research-informed, holistic health and fitness approach to increase the wellness and readiness of the force,” Patricia Mulcahy, deputy chief of space operations for personnel wrote in a March 16 memo.

The program will promote “physical activity, lifestyle/performance medicine principles and increase education and awareness to ensure all guardians are mentally and physically fit.”

The program will be implemented in 2023 and incorporate the use of wearable technology and a software that provides workout regiments and preventative health practices to increase self-awareness and provide continuous insight into health.

For this year, however, guardians will still need to complete the Air Force’s fitness program. But, the assessments will not determine retention or promotion eligibility or be used for disciplinary measures.

“Every guardian remains responsible for ensuring they are mentally and physically fit,” Mulcahy wrote. “We will embrace this exciting opportunity to combine leading-edge physiology and technology to foster a culture of wellness.”

The Space Force paired with a company called FitRankings for its pilot. The fitness platform tracks goals, and connects to other devices like FitBits and iPhones.

The company’s mission is to give organizations “the technology, tools, and support to create authentic and impactful digital fitness and health experiences for their communities,” the website states. “We give individuals the ability to connect their fitness data to organizations, causes, and experiences they care about.”

As the military continues to trying to attract talent for the 21^st century it’s finding that not all careers need to uphold the physical standards of the past.

The Defense Department has been experimenting with and rethinking what physical tradeoffs are acceptable for people who work in the cyber realm and may never go into a real-world combat situation. — SM

DHA dropping the ball on screening, treatment for alcohol abuse

The Defense Health Agency may be failing service members in properly screening and treating them for alcohol disorders.

A report from the Defense Department Inspector General found that military health care providers did not provide annual tests in a timely manner to help identify hazardous alcohol users in nearly 78% of the service members in the seven units the office investigated.

“Units we reviewed were 66 to 200 days past the annual requirement,” the authors of the report wrote. “However, 15 service members did not receive their alcohol screening for more than 300 days past the due date.”

That’s not the only area where the military failed to help service members who may have issues with alcohol. Service members who went into clinics were not being tested for alcohol abuse either. Out of the 270 service members the DoD IG reviewed, 104 did not have an intake assessment to diagnose alcohol use disorder with DHA-established timeframes. Nearly 100 did not get the recommended treatment in a timely fashion and three service members who were diagnosed did not get treatment at all.

“Furthermore, 103 of the 270 service members we reviewed were involved in an alcohol-related incident. Of these 103 service members, 31 were not referred for an intake assessment within the Army, Marine Corps, or Air Force timeline requirements,” the authors wrote.

The DoD IG said delays in treatment and screening can have serious issues affecting physiological, psychological, familial and employment health.

In addition, DoD risks the health and readiness of service members who could be best served by treatment.

Heavy alcohol abuse is a significant problem in the military, according to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

“Alcohol misuse is strongly associated with mental health problems, such as anxiety and depression,” the DoD IG authors wrote. “If service members are concerned with their alcohol use or suspected of alcohol misuse, they can be referred to the substance abuse center, or the service member can self‑refer. Once referred, service members undergo a comprehensive intake assessment to determine their alcohol use diagnosis and the appropriate level of treatment.”

DoD IG is recommending that DHA require a standardized mechanism that will track when service members are due for their annual screenings.

“Furthermore, we recommend that the DHA director review the civilian hiring and retention practices for substance abuse personnel and make applicable improvements to minimize vacant positions,” the authors wrote. They go on to suggest DHA should “establish a maximum number of days between a substance abuse referral and an intake assessment for a substance use disorder; and establish the maximum number of days to provide substance abuse treatment following a diagnosis of a substance use disorder.” — SM

The bill authorizes funding for intelligence agencies, provides new legal authorities for priorities like emerging technologies, enacts new restrictions in some cases and gives Congress some additional oversight measures. Here are some highlights from the 2022 bill:

Progress wanted on Trusted Workforce 2.0

The legislation requires the director of national intelligence and the director of the Office of Personnel Management to publish a “policy with guidelines and standards for Federal Government agencies and industry partners to implement the Trusted Workforce 2.0 initiative” in the Federal Register within six months.

The initiative is aimed at streamlining and updating government-wide security clearance policies, and the Biden administration sees it as a banner year for the reform effort. 

But Congress clearly wants to see more progress on Trusted Workforce 2.0, which started during the Trump administration. The bill directs an independent study of the 2.0 effort, including an appraisal of “how effective such initiatives are or will be in determining who should or should not have access to classified information.”

New program office for commercial geospatial data

Intelligence agencies were directed to consider commercial satellite remote sensing capabilities and services before they turn to governmental systems as part of the Fiscal Year 2021 National Defense Authorization Act.

The 2022 intelligence bill takes the commercial-first focus a step further by directing the National Reconnaissance Office and the National Geospatial-Intelligence to develop a plan for establishing an “integrated commercial geospatial-intelligence data program office” within 90 days.

Both the NRO and NGA have made efforts to work more closely with the burgeoning commercial satellite industry. The NGA is already working on a commercial systems buying guide for use across the intelligence community, the Defense Department and other federal agencies.

The intelligence bill sketches out how the integrated data program office will be housed within the NRO, which is responsible for purchasing commercial space imagery. But the bill also indicates the agencies should plan for the office to be embedded with NGA personnel, as it’s the agency responsible for setting geospatial-intelligence requirements as the government’s “functional manager” for GEOINT.

Strengthening protections for IC whistleblowers

The new law also strengthens protections for intelligence community whistleblowers by ensuring standard protections apply for employees across all agencies. It also clarifies that whistleblowers are protected from having their clearance revoked for reporting mismanagement, even if it’s not “gross mismanagement.”

The bill also clarifies that the inspectors general have the “sole authority” to determine whether any complaint or information is a matter of “urgent concern.”

But the final bill also left out several protections that were included in the Senate’s initial version of the bill, including language that would have explicitly provided whistleblowers the ability to contact the congressional intelligence committees.

“On the whole, these are a step in the right direction,” Melissa Wasser, policy counsel at the Project on Government Oversight, said on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin last week. “We’re going to have to figure out next steps for including those fixes that were not included this time.”

Data sharing on unidentified aerial phenomena

After directing the establishment of a formal Unidentified Aerial Phenomena office as part of the FY 22 NDAA, lawmakers directed more action on the unidentified flying objects front in this year’s intelligence bill.

Specifically, the new law directs the DNI and the secretary of defense to require that “each element of the intelligence community and component of the Department of Defense with data relating to unidentified aerial phenomena makes such data available immediately” with the Navy’s UAP task force, as well as the National Air and Space Intelligence Center at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio.

The bill also directs the UAP task force or the successor entity to report to Congress on all new unidentified aerial phenomena events going forward.

New post-employment restrictions

The legislation enacts new restrictions on certain intelligence agency officials seeking work as a contractor for a foreign government after they leave the intelligence community.

It includes a 30-month cooling off period for employees who occupy particularly sensitive positions at U.S. intelligence agencies. During that time, the new law prohibits such employees from working directly or indirectly for foreign governments on work related to national security, intelligence, the military, or internal security.

The bill allows the Director of National Intelligence to issue a waiver on the 30-month prohibition on a case-by-case basis.

Employees who do accept such jobs would also have to report on their employment to their former agency annually for at least five years from when they left their U.S. intelligence position.

The new restrictions were spurred on by reporting from Reuters that revealed former U.S. intelligence officials helped the United Arab Emirates surveil other governments, human rights activists and even some Americans.

U.S. Space Command is only two years old and has yet to reach its full operational capability, but the real and philosophical problems it needs to handle continue to multiply.

Space debris, eccentric billionaires, intercontinental ballistic missiles, diplomacy and rules of engagement are all pressing issues lining up in its portfolio.

Despite the challenges, SPACECOM is still about three years away from being fully staffed and at total capability, command chief Gen. James Dickinson told members of the Senate Armed Services Committee Tuesday.

Dickenson said SPACECOM is about 45% to 50% staffed, with the rest of the command made up of contractors filling in for full-time service members.

“It’s based on many things,” Dickenson said. “One is personnel, the other has to do with expertise within the command making sure that I have completely trained for the processes and procedures within the command to be able to do the entire mission set that I’ve been given.”

SPACECOM was formed in 2019, and is tasked with conducting operations in, from and to space to deter conflict, defeat aggression and deliver space combat power for the military, the command’s mission statement says.

That mission is proving to be more complex than ever as Russia asserts itself into Ukraine and China continues to test capabilities outside of the planet.

One of SPACECOM’s main concerns is all of the objects circling the earth. Dickenson said when the command stood up, there were 25,000 pieces of space debris floating in orbit. Today, that number has ballooned to 44,000.

SPACECOM tracks those objects because they pose a threat to U.S. and commercial assets in space. One high profile example is Object No. 36912, which threatened the International Space Station in 2015.

The object was a piece broken off from a Soviet weather satellite that was launched In 1979; it forced members of the ISS to huddle in place until the threat passed. Sen. Mark Kelly (D-Ariz.), who now sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee, was on the space station during the incident.

The military is looking into ways that it can clean up the increasingly congested area outside of the earth’s atmosphere.

Leaders of the Space Force’s Rapid Capabilities Office and Space and Missiles Systems Center are hunting for solutions by working with industry.

Tracking the increasing number of objects in space is one of the more cogent missions of SPACECOM. Other areas have a theoretical bent to them, like how weapons will be used in space and what are the agreed upon uses of them.

Dickenson said the command and the Defense Department are currently working through things like creating international norms for space weapons.

Last July, the Pentagon released its five tenets for responsible behavior in space, which Dickenson said will inform those larger policies about weapons in space.

Those tenets include avoiding the creation of harmful interference, operating with regard to others in a professional manner and limiting debris.

Of course, individual nations aren’t the only actors outside the atmosphere these days. Corporations now influence the space domain as well. Elon Musk is providing his Starlink service to Ukraine so the country can continue to have internet access after Russia shut down some connections.

SPACECOM is taking into account how those actors affect the balance of power in space and what implications they may have for the United States.

Dickenson said Starlink is an example of how proliferation of connections and sensors can help keep continuous services to the military.

SPACECOM is currently working on building out its architecture to link sensors.

“We have made a lot of progress in identifying and incorporating sensors that we traditionally did not use for space domain awareness, missile warning or missile defense in the global perspective,” Dickenson said. “Our goal is to link these sensors together from a terrestrial perspective. We’re linking our space-based assets and bringing them into a common operating picture. We’re working towards that to the ultimate piece where we have one operating picture that has those sensors fused.”

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If the U.S. military’s modernizing efforts don’t go faster than its aging process, the country’s got a problem. Yet that’s exactly what’s happening, according to the next guest on the Federal Drive with Tom Temin. Robert McDonald is a retired CIA officer and former professor of national security at the National War College.

Interview transcript:

Tom Temin: Mr. McDonald, good to have you on.

Robert McDonald: Yes, thank you very much.

Tom Temin: And you have posited the thesis that, at least in the space area and the airforce area, the acquisition process is a big impediment to modernizing. Why don’t we begin though back a step and talk about what you see as the major threats and what the military sees as the big threats that they need more agile acquisition to take on?

Robert McDonald: Well, right now, it seems that China is an emerging and growing threat. It clearly has focused its attention on becoming a dominant space power, dominant military power. And it clearly has the intent to displace the United States as being the primary space organization. Obviously, if you look at the South China Sea, it’s intimidating. All the claimants that believe that they hold certain territory, China says, no, it’s theirs. China is even pressuring Japan over contested areas in the East China Sea. And if you look at the expectations of the intelligence community, it sees China building a space station within the next year or two. So it clearly is a growing threat and its work with hyperspectral weapons is quite frightening in that these are much more difficult to identify, warning becomes a problem. There tests seem to be quite effective. So on the one hand, you have this growing national security threat from China. On the other hand, there’s a question of does the U.S. acquisition system position itself to move quickly, and you need to move quickly when there is this kind of growing threat? The GAO (Government Accountability Office) has shown that there are serious problems.

Tom Temin: Right. Well, let me ask you this. Before we get into the acquisition question, what does space capability give China that we don’t have? Or how does it enhance their ability? They’ve got fighters, and they’ve got jets and carriers similar to our platforms. What about space gives people an advantage these days? Or is it they can just use space to shoot down our satellites?

Robert McDonald: Probably all of the above, what appears to be somewhat frightening is that China is integrating all of its base services, the satellite reconnaissance, navigation, communication, into its weapons and command and control system. And this would ultimately erode the U.S. military information advantage. And that advantage is necessary for hyperspectral weapons because one of the most promising ways to detect and manage that threat is through space. And if our space capability is diminished, that diminishes our ability to anticipate and counter hyperspectral weapons systems.

Tom Temin: Plus, we’re behind on the hyperspectral weapons themselves too, aren’t we?

Robert McDonald: Yes, yes, that seems to be a problem. Last year, there were U.S. tests with failure. And it seems that then that effort is not moving as quickly or as fast as it should.

Tom Temin: We’re speaking with Robert McDonald. He’s a senior CIA officer, retired, and former professor of national security at the National War College. So let’s get into the idea of acquisition as enabling some of these capabilities to come into the U.S. faster than they would otherwise. You’ve laid out seven basic tenants that seemed pretty simple on the face of them to reform acquisition, especially in the Air Force and the Space Force which you say are, you know, the point services on some of this effort we need.

Robert McDonald: Yeah, on the surface, the seven tenants seem to be very simple and very obvious. Often the obvious is something that is not obvious until it’s pointed out. The seven tenants are: identify the threat and objectives to overcome the threat, establish short timelines, ensure funding and staffing is adequate and stable — stable is an important factor there. Another key thing is number four the breakaway teams. They need to be small, streamlined and collaborative. The fifth tenet is employ experienced experts and in the Cold War period we studied, they recruited systems engineers and program management with extended experience. And then another key factor is draw on the latest advances in technology. There’s a lot of technology out there, take advantage and building on it. For example, the first reconnaissance satellite adapted ICBM (intercontinental ballistic missile) technology for its launch. It adapted airborne balloon recovery through recover film capsules coming back from space. So the technology is there, what we found is by taking advantage of it, you can move ahead much more quickly. And then one of the really key ones is number seven, avoid the bureaucratic sludge.

So those seven principles worked very effectively in the early Cold War days to get the U.S. into space. As many will recall, Sputnik was from Russia, the Soviet Union at the time, was the first satellite in space. The Americans said that they were behind, they would never catch up. By the application of the seven tenants, within months, we were there. That’s the surprise, is how quickly we were able to employ the seven tenants and move forward.

Tom Temin: Well, let me ask you this, there is increased use of other transactional authorities, which buys you prototypes. There are all of these Defense Innovation Units, AFWERX, this works, that works, lots of programs and offices being stood up to or having been stood up to try to get this velocity going, how come they haven’t produced the results needed?

Robert McDonald: I don’t know. But I would suspect that all of the seven tenants may not have been employed. One of the key is the breakaway team, which allows you to get out of the bureaucratic overhang and sludge. The other thing is that you have to encourage risk taking, and you have to permit and encourage failure. Failure is absolutely essential in working in a new domain, if you’re going to find new answers. And when the United States was trying to develop its first reconnaissance satellite, it had 12 failures, dramatic failures, oftentimes the booster would explode on launch, at times the recovery would fail, at times the orbit would be off. 12 failures, it was on number 13 that there was the first success. Failure was permitted. But each failure was a learning experience. I’m not sure that that’s permitted today. If you fail, you stop and you’re fired, and somebody replaces you.

Tom Temin: Yes. And also that stable funding from Congress, which also can be a pretty ham fisted overseer to these failures, you’ve got kind of a dual issue there up on Capitol Hill, don’t you?

Robert McDonald: Yeah, you absolutely need funding to the level necessary to meet the objective, and it needs to be stable over time. Just as the staffing needs to be stable over time. You need experts, you need money and you need failure. We found that the seven tenants created that kind of environment where there was stable funding, where there were opportunities to make mistakes and be creative.

Tom Temin: And I just wanted to ask you this sort of philosophically, do you believe that we’re still a serious nation, because a lot of military planners, a lot of writers such as yourself mentioned, let’s get Silicon Valley in here. And there’s always talk about Silicon Valley. We don’t make silicon much anymore. And that’s a big problem we’re trying to play catch up on. So Silicon Valley has become Software Valley. And so much of the software coming out of Silicon Valley seems to be designed to get people to look at stupid things so they can be sold an ad.

Robert McDonald: Yeah, obviously, this era is different from the Cold War era. And it’s going to be a much bigger challenge to apply the seven tenants for the various reasons that you pointed out. But if we can permit people to break away in a team with the brightest and the best, give them stable funding, and allow them to work on the project for more than 18 months, we can do it. We did it before. When Sputnik was launched, there was belief that the Soviets were well ahead of us in their space technology and in their weapon system. And within months, that turned out to not be the case. With regard to the U2. Eight months, it was deployed. With regard to the first spy satellite, 30 months to develop it. So we did it in the past. We can do it again. And I believe applying the seven tenants and creating the environment for risk taking and creativity get us there.

Tom Temin: Robert McDonald is a retired CIA officer and former professor of national security at the National War College. Thanks so much for joining me.

Robert McDonald: You’re welcome. Glad to do it.

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The Pentagon’s Space Development Agency made awards worth a combined $1.8 billion on Monday to start building an interconnected mesh network of 126 small satellites in low-earth orbit, and what officials say will be the communications “backbone” of the military’s vision for Joint All-Domain Command and Control (JADC2).

Under the current plan, satellite launches are set to begin in September 2024 and start delivering battlefield communications capabilities shortly thereafter. But those specific payloads aren’t intended to continue doing so for very long. SDA’s approach calls for new “tranches” of relatively-inexpensive satellites to launch every two years, each adding incremental improvements based on proven commercial technologies.

DoD made the awards as other transaction agreements (OTAs) to three companies: Lockheed Martin ($700 million), Northrop Grumman ($692 million), and York Space Systems ($382 million).

Despite the vast price difference, the two larger, more traditional Defense companies are tasked with meeting the exact same requirements as York, a Denver-based firm which said it is focused on improving spacecraft affordability for government and commercial customers.

Each company will deliver 42 satellites, all of which must be interoperable with one another and with DoD’s systems, said Derek Tournear, SDA’s director.

“Each one was given a set of requirements and they bid to that capability. And realistically, York is just able to deliver at a lower price point than what Lockheed and Northrop bid,” he said during a roundtable organized by the Defense Writers Group. “We looked at schedule risk, we’re all about speed to make sure we hit those two year cycles. And then after that, 50% of the evaluation criteria is about cost reasonableness. It’s a big factor. Overall, it’s just that York is able to deliver at a lower price point.”

But cost and schedule weren’t the only considerations. SDA’s operating model is dependent on the idea that multiple vendors ought to be working at all times on the next tranche of space-based networking capabilities.

“That allows us to create this market where every two years we can have this open competition, and anyone can feel empowered to invest their own independent R&D to come up with an offering and then bid it back to us, and they have a shot at winning without there being a vendor lock,” he said. “Now, we can say that, but then how do we actually enforce it? We have a government reference architecture that’s the gold standard, where all of the vendors need to come and show that they can connect to our government-owned-and-run test lab. If you can talk to the government reference architecture, then you can talk to all the satellites, and you can push forward.”

In all, SDA received eight proposals for the latest competition, formally known as “Tranche 1” of the transport layer for the new National Defense Space Architecture.

One of the new capabilities the new constellation is meant to bring to JADC2 is the ability to let ground-based radios, ships and aircraft connect directly to satellites using the military’s Link 16 data protocol. Theoretically, they’ll be able to do that using radios that are already in the field, even though the widely-deployed standard was never designed to use satellite data links.

Another new feature: The satellites will communicate with each other – and with a limited set of new ground-based terminals via much faster optical (laser) data links instead of more traditional radio frequencies, which are also more susceptible to jamming and interference.

“Not everyone’s going to have an optical terminal that can talk to Tranche 1, but there are certain prioritized users that we’re working with to put an optical terminal on their platform, which will allow them to have high data rates with very low latency through that optical communication,” Tournear said. “Primarily that’s to enable large data transfer to targeting cells, and then from the targeting cells up to the transport layer so that we can get it down to the shooter via Link 16.”

What if none of it works? SDA strongly believes it will, but if some or all of Tranche 1 doesn’t perform as planned, that’s the advantage of working in quick technology insertion and replacement cycles, he said.

“SDA is built on two pillars: pillar number one is proliferation [of small satellites], but pillar number two is spiral development, and that second pillar is always plan B,” he said. “So we will always have a tranche that is in development, ready to launch essentially in two-year increments. I don’t anticipate all of Tranche 1 to fail. But if parts of it fail, then then Tranche 2 is right behind it, and it’ll be up there just two years later.”

Although the agency issued the latest round of awards as OTAs, in principle, it’s not averse to using traditional FAR-based contracts. SDA started some of the initial integration work for its new architecture with a $112 million contract to Perspecta, and managed to move through the FAR contracting process in just three-and-a-half months from RFP to final award.

In this case though, SDA decided the OTA path made the most sense for its spiral development process.

“I was always pretty adamant that the FAR allows you to go quickly,” he said. “The reason we switched to an OT is that there are some FAR clauses that were not consistent with what industry was proposing and what we wanted to do to move quicker. We went with the OT so that we could essentially give industry more freedom to propose on the time scales that we asked for.”

Dave Gauthier, director of commercial and business operations at NGA, said the “commercial supplier matrix” will help match users who may need airfield monitoring, for instance, with the best service available to them.

“The intent is for my organization to have the best information or knowledge about all these capabilities out there in the supply side,” Gauthier said during an interview on “Inside the IC.” “And then take the requirements we get from our users and do the best we can at orchestrating and matching commercial supplier solutions to the needs of our users.”

NGA is leading a shift toward turning to commercial sources of GEOINT as “primary sources” of intelligence, as opposed to internal, often highly classified capabilities. The shift is spelled out in NGA’s latest commercial GEOINT strategy released in the fall.

With so much commercial imagery now available, Gauthier said NGA is also making a “fundamental shift” toward commercial analytic services, rather than just trying to obtain imagery and other rawer forms of intelligence for its analysts.

“It’s this idea that companies themselves, either the imagery providers or in partnership with analytics companies, will work to extract information from imagery, and provide us what I like to call the box scores instead of the game tape,” he said.

Intelligence analysts also have new forms of intelligence, termed “phenomenologies,” available to them on the commercial market beyond imagery, including radio-frequency information, social media feeds and other Internet-derived data.

“With so many different types of suppliers, and so many opportunities to pull in these services, we really have to provide a catalog of capabilities to our user community,” Gauthier said.

The platform’s initial release is intended for intelligence, defense and federal civilian agencies, but some aspect of it could be made available to the public, he said.

Gauthier said the platform is currently in testing.

“It’s still being built in [and] populated today,” he said. “We do have a community of beta testers to help us understand and make sure we’re answering the questions and can anticipate the questions that those users would have when they want to research this information for their own decision making.”

Commercial-first strategy takes hold

NGA’s commercial-first strategy represents a “monumental shift” for the intelligence community that has traditionally relied on government systems to glean information about the Earth, Gauthier said. NGA has been using commercial capabilities since the first companies formed the market in the 1990s and early 2000s, but typically as secondary sources.

“For the past 20 years, our philosophy, our culture has been one of augmenting what we do internally with some additional information that can be procured from the commercial market,” he said. “And so it’s always been government systems as primary source with augmentation from commercial capabilities as we could.”

Many commercial satellite operations started out to monitor agricultural operations or to search for opportunities in oil and gas. Now NGA is watching as satellite companies begin to fill a void for information about where to put solar farms, or provide imagery for urban planners developing schematics for smart cities.

“We’re also looking at a large upsurge in funding for climate and environmental projects around the world,” Gauthier said. “So there are some companies who are fully funding satellites based on charitable contributions that are interested in climate change. And so those are all very new investments that are also propelling our market forward.”

Beyond traditional satellite imagery, NGA is closely watching the radar imaging market, Gauthier said. The National Reconnaissance Office recently awarded contracts to five commercial synthetic aperture radar vendors.

“We will be seeing hundreds of radar imaging satellites go up over the next two or three years,” Gauthier said. “And so we’re really structuring some of our contracts to take advantage of that and bring that information into our analytic users hands every day.”

Gauthier estimated more than a quarter of the imagery NGA takes in today comes from commercial vendors.

“I foresee that number getting to 50%, and that’s where we might be able to say, ‘Now, we are predominantly using commercially provided data,’ as soon as we cross that threshold,” he said.

Bailment agreements grow

One way NGA has been testing out commercial capabilities is through the use of “bailment agreements.” The arrangements give the agency a chance to take temporary possession of a company’s imagery, analysis or other service at zero cost, so it can determine its utility and provide feedback to the vendor.

NGA has completed nearly two dozen bailment agreements over the last few years, and several companies have now won operational contracts with the agency, according to Gauthier.

“We’re trying to try out these goods and services,” he said. “If they’re not ready, they get feedback on how to make them more ready for government contracts. And then once they are, they’re in there competing with everybody else to win business.”

NGA signed 12 bailment agreements in 2021, and Gauthier expects that rate to continue in the years ahead.

“I think that’s sort of what we’re on pace to do every year, is to keep bringing in new actors into this competitive space, and ensure that we can get the types of services we need to satisfy mission,” he said.

The mixture of COVID and the addition of a new branch of the military are making this year’s CR particularly challenging for the military service personnel chiefs.

The Space Force has already brought over some of the people it needs from the Air Force and it continues to recruit. However, the service still needs to matriculate members from the Army and Navy.

“There are real resource impacts to our guardians and their families and our mission if we do not receive a 2022 appropriation,” Patricia Mulcahy, Space Force deputy chief of space operations for personnel, said during a Congressional hearing Tuesday. “The long-term vision for consolidation of all armed forces Space Force professionals will be stalled. We would be unable to execute Army and Navy inner-service unit transfers and unable to cover much needed increases in our civilian talent.”

The service currently sits at about 7,000 guardians, but plans to expand to about 8,400 by the end of 2022. Mulcahy told the House Armed Services Personnel Subcommittee that the Space Force is still in its nascent stages. It needs personnel to build out important parts of the branch.

The Air Force said it will also have some personnel issues if a CR continues. Lt. Gen. Brian Kelly, Air Force deputy chief of staff for manpower and reserve affairs, said covering the 2.7% pay increase without 2022 appropriations means the service needs to cut in other places within the personnel budget.

Kelly said the Air Force will have to eliminate incentives and bonuses for 11,000 service members and reduce the number of accessions it makes in the fourth quarter by up to 21,000 members if the CR goes for a full year.

“We will have to unnecessarily delay or cancel moves, creating uncertainty for many families, particularly during the summer months when the majority of our moves occur in order to accommodate school schedules,” Kelly said. “This in turn impacts spousal employment, childcare and school transition plans both in the U.S. and overseas.”

The possible lack of incentives and bonuses could hurt the services as they struggle to recruit enough new members during COVID.

“We have a very challenging recruiting environment right now, largely due to COVID and some other environmental factors but [we’re] very aggressively working through all of that,” said Lt. Gen. Gary Brito, Army deputy chief of staff for G-1.

The other services echoed his concerns. Vice Adm. John Nowell, chief of naval operations for manpower, personnel and services, said he recently received a report that the propensity to service in the eligible populations declined from 13% to 10% in the last two to three years.

The Air Force recruiting chief said last month that warning lights are flashing for recruitment in 2022.

“If we were a company, we would still be in the black, we would still be making a profit, but our profit margins and our available capital, those numbers are trending down right now,” Maj. Gen. Edward Thomas, Jr., commander of the Air Force Recruiting Service, told Federal News Network. “The aggregate effect of these two years of COVID is driving downward trends in our pool of qualified applicants.”