Space Force Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy (Image: Space Force Association)
WASHINGTON — The Space Force’s primary acquisition command is reviewing a number of its high-dollar legacy programs to consider whether there are now alternative commercial options for achieving the missions — starting with a new satellite constellation for keeping tabs on the heavens, according to a senior Space Systems Command (SSC) official.
Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, military deputy at the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration, told the Washington Space Business Roundtable today that he signed off last week on an “acquisition decision memorandum (ADM)” instructing a team to undertake an analysis of commercial options for obtaining new space situational awareness capabilities to monitor geosynchronous orbit (GEO).
Further, he said that more ADMs are in the works, “hopefully” as soon as next week, on programs ranging from satellite communications to ground systems.
“We basically had our team look for the last couple of weeks at many of our programs, looking for anything that looks like it could use some commercial competition. And so it’s a whole host of them,” Purdy said.
“There are several programs that are slow, … traditional, expensive, and there’s a potential that there might be commercial opportunities for each one of those,” he elaborated. “And so we’re going to have [the acquisition community] go out there, hopefully go out with some RFIs, and understand what’s possible … in the requirements trade off space — something that we’ve not traditionally done very well.”
The idea, Purdy stressed, is to find potential alternatives for “getting us out of one-off, billion-dollar systems into a proliferated architecture.”
For example, he later told reporters that SSC will be looking at commercial alternatives to the Deep Space Advanced Radar Capability (DARC), a trio of ground-based radar facilities designed to track satellites and dangerous space junk in far away orbits with more precision. The Space Force on Feb. 20 announced it is wrapping up construction at the first site in Western Australia. The other two sites will be located in the United Kingdom and the United States.
“We’re proceeding with DARC, although I’m going to look at: ‘Hey, are there commercial solutions at DARC? Any one of them?’ We’re looking to ask the question. We may or may not find anything,” Purdy said.
He cautioned, however, that with DARC and all other big ticket, legacy acquisition programs, a key to allowing commercial solutions will be a willingness on the part of the Space Force to down-scope requirements.
“We’re going to have to roll back requirements,” he said. “I mean, a lot of these most expensive systems, they have key requirements that are driving expense and time.”
Purdy explained that while rigorous performance requirements may be “what the operator wants” for any particular program, it is the job of the acquisition community to provide them with commercial options that may necessitate requirements “trade offs” to obtain lower costs and more rapid availability for critical capabilities.
Eyes In The GEO Belt
Purdy explained to reporters that US Space Command “has been eager for the unclassified capability” for keeping better tabs on adversary birds in the GEO belt. China, in particular, has been operating satellites in GEO that often closely shadow US and allied satellites apparently taking images and monitoring their operations.
Further, he said, international governments/vendors also have been “clamoring to provide” such capabilities to the US Space Surveillance Network, which incorporates ground-based radars and telescopes, as well as satellites with on-board sensors.
The Space Force last March issued a request for information (RFI) about a new GEO constellation of highly maneuverable satellites carrying electro-optical cameras. The satellites, in essence, would be a successor to the Space Force’s Geosynchronous Space Situational Awareness Program (GSSAP) constellation first declassified in 2014, and its follow-on called SILENTBARKER developed in tandem with the National Reconnaissance Office.
“So many companies responded back to SSC on that particular one,” Purdy said. “So, I’ve asked the team to go in there and clean those [RFI responses] up and get me a commercial analysis on what kind of capabilities could we provide on what timeline and what cost compared to any existing programs of record.”
The next step will be for SSC to “provide options” to the Space Force, he said. “We’ll see if that’s of interest to them — are these requirements trade offs of interest or not?”
Workforce Woes
Meanwhile, Purdy is fretting the potential for workforce reductions among the Space Force acquisition corps as a result of Elon Musk’s DOGE cost-cutting efforts. In response to questions from reporters, he explained that the majority of the Space Force acquisition workforce is civilian, including a host of civilian contractors.
“If we end up losing a lot of civilians, that will be a problem on the acquisition side. We’re a heavily acquisition force, so a lot of our system program offices have civilians for continuity purposes, and it will impact us in a pretty great way,” Purdy said.
Another issue is that because the Space Force is a small service, it will be hard to simply fill in for lost civilians with military personnel, he said, especially as the service already is struggling to meet operational needs.
“Now sometimes we can be efficient and not do some work, but a lot of this work is required at different levels in the hierarchy,” Purdy added. “And until we get rid of that requirement, then we’re … basically going to be delayed. And that’s the key. Is that if we’re getting rid of the people, we need to get rid of the requirements.”
He further noted that rather than start with laying off civilians on “probationary status,” his preference would be to look at voluntary separations and retirements — especially because there are a lot of civilians in the Pentagon workforce who are nearing retirement age.
“So, I wonder, hey, can we go down that route,” Purdy said. “But, you know, I’ll do whatever leadership wants.”
