The U.S. Air Force‘s senior military space leadership intends to turn the service’s troubled space acquisition processes into the model of excellence across the Department of Defense.

The goal amounts to a modern-day phoenix of sorts because many of the Air Force’s sophisticated, big-ticket, space programs in development, such as the Space Based Infrared Systems High early warning satellite, have been beset by time-consuming integration challenges, costly budget overruns and lengthy schedule slips in recent years.

Indeed, the service’s track record of management has not inspired confidence amongst the Congress. Lawmakers have, in fact, slashed the budgets for more ambitious space projects, like Space Radar, in the past several years and directed them back to the drawing board for better maturation of technologies.

But the Air Force’s senior most space officials say the service is on the right path to reverse course. "I know we have to earn our way back to the table . . . but I am confident that we are on the right track," Gen. Lance Lord, Air Force Space Command’s outgoing commander, told sister publication Defense Daily Feb. 22. Lord will retire March 3.

The Air Force’s space leadership has instituted a "back-to-basics" approach for the acquisition of next-generation satellites and launch vehicles, with the goal of reducing the risk to the production phases of its satellite and launch vehicle projects by introducing only mature technologies into them.

Ronald Sega, the Air Force’s under secretary, said the service’s revamped space acquisition processes will shift the risk of next-generation satellite programs from the production phase to the earlier developmental stages. This "back-to-basics" approach will place the Department of Defense in a better position to deliver next-generation space systems on cost and schedule, Sega said.

The focus will be on inserting only mature technologies into developmental programs so as to avoid the kinds of delays caused by technology and integration challenges that have hampered the production phases of the service’s sophisticated next-generation communications, missile-early- warning and weather satellites over the last decade.

While reducing the risk to the production phase, the service intends to proceed more boldly in the beginning stages of science and technology exploration and initial technology development, Sega said. "The approach is to take more risk and push the frontier harder" in the early stages, he said. The overall effect will be "a redistribution of the risk," he said, noting however, that he regards the net effect as "probably taking more risk", which is advantageous in this case.

As part of the new tack, Sega said he would like to "cast the net wide" to encourage bold concepts during science and technology exploration conducted by the Air Force Research Laboratory, the Air Force Academy and outside universities and research centers.

Further, he said, "we would like to fly more", meaning the desire for a greater number of space-based experiments during technology development.

The Air Force is pioneering the new acquisition approach with the Transformational Satellite Communications (TSAT) program. The service is restructuring the TSAT program into blocks as discussed in the Quadrennial Defense Review, released earlier this month, and reflected in the service’s fiscal year 2007 budget request to the Congress.

Block one of TSAT, which will encompass satellites one and two, will have reduced requirements for the satellites’ laser communications links and internet-like processor routers. These will be enhanced for the remaining three TSAT spacecraft, which will be part of block two, according to an Air Force document.

The first launch of a TSAT satellite is anticipated around the middle of next decade.

Sega said blocks will be pursued, when appropriate, for space systems. Coordination with the user community is essential so that what comes out during a certain block is what best supports it.

Sega also said it is important to note that a next-generation space system must not be the do-all, be-all solution. "It is important for us to look at this in the context of what it provides," he said. "Sometimes these are space systems that mutually support each other. But it is also in support and will be in conjunction with other assets, for example, in the air and on the ground."

Accordingly, he said, "if we have a radar in space that has a moving target indicator feature to it and we have a certain number in orbit, it is not necessary . . . that one system needs to do all of the work. It need not be persistent by itself. It need not deliver all of the information that is necessary about a particular object. Rather its function could be to cue another sensor, an airplane, for example."

Sega also said his office continues to expand its activities to establish clear lines of cooperation and coordination both within the Pentagon space community and outside of it. His office is starting a dialogue with industry.

Along with these changes, Lord said he has tasked Lt. Gen. Michael Hamel, who heads the Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) at Los Angeles Air Force Base, Calif., and is also the service’s program executive officer for space, to transform the organization into a model of acquisition excellence across the entire Pentagon by the end of 2006.

"I have set the goal for them to be the [Department of Defense] model for acquisition, not just the Air Force Space Command or the Air Force model," said Lord. He added that he wants the center to demonstrate that the Air Force "can mature the technologies in the right kind of way and build these programs and get off of this . . . kind of situation where everything is over cost and over schedule."

Hamel told reporters during a separate meeting Feb. 22 that he is focusing his efforts in three areas to achieve this goal: reinvigorating acquisition processes and discipline, building better partnerships across the government and with industry, and bolstering the aerospace workforce that atrophied in the 1990s.

"Space is critical to our nation’s security," said Hamel. "That really begins with how it is we go about developing and fielding and then sustaining those capabilities once on orbit. We really are laying the foundation to hopefully reestablish SMC as the recognized leader in space acquisition."