Simple satellite sensors with broad commercial utility could be a starting point for the Defense Department to change its satellite acquisition culture as opposed to satellites with a complex and inherent military focus, according to a key Air Force general.
“A simple weather sensor may be the right kind of thing to go after and once we get more successes, that will beget opportunity for success,” Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) Director of Requirements Maj. Gen. Martin Whelan told Defense Daily in a Nov. 20 interview. “I don’t think we want to buy a SBIRS satellite with a new, less stringent culture because of the complexity of the satellite.”
Whelan said Space-Based Infrared Systems (SBIRS), the Air Force’s nuclear-hardened missile warning and defense satellite constellation, is an example of an acquisition program where DoD would rather use its usual method of acquisition because of its inherent military utility.
Whelan said there is a cultural change necessary in Air Force space acquisition efforts, but those changes won’t occur overnight.
“There’s a whole entity within AFSPC, the Office of the Secretary of Defense, that is culturally aligned to do things the old way and we have to educate them to the value of doing things differently,” Whelan said.
Whelan said satellite communications might also be a good place for DoD to begin its new and improved approach to acquisitions.
“We’re learning how to do that, but it will be on a case-by-case basis until we get enough victories and until industry is fully developed in that mission area,” Whelan said. “But, as I said, satellite communications might be an area that would be ripe for looking for the next victory.”
Intelsat General CEO Kay Sears said in a Nov. 7 interview with Defense Daily there is a communication and culture gap that is stunting how the defense industrial base can best provide services for the Pentagon at competitive rates. Sears centered much of her frustration around DoD’s next-generation satellite communications constellation Wideband Global Satcom (WGS). DoD has been investing in WGS satellites as a huge demand for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) bandwidth grew out of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Air Force issued prime contractor Boeing [BA] a $318 million contract modification in July to produce, and launch, a 10th WGS satellite. The initial WGS contract was awarded in 2001 (Defense Daily, Jan. 20).
Sears said the design of the WGS satellites is very similar to what commercial satellite operators like Intelsat General use, adding if DoD says it lacks sufficient resources in this age of budget austerity to invest in modern commercial satellite technology, why does it continue to invest in new WGS satellites that are based on technology from when the contract was awarded 10 years ago?
“I think the frustrating part about that is we’ve been offering those, and because they conflict with a program of record (WGS), they conflict with, perhaps, what the government is doing for themselves on their own,” Sears said. “Because (WGS) is their own communications satellite series, some of those cost-effective proposals are ignored or you don’t get much traction.”
Sears said DoD has been relying on industry to support the bandwidth necessities of those ISR assets, such as the General Atomics-developed unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) Reapers and Predators and the Northrop Grumman– [NOC] produced Global Hawk series of UAVs. Sears said industry is doing a lot of the “backhauling” of info and dissemination of that ISR info back into the field.
“That’s a job we want to do in the future and the question is: How do we do that better,” Sears asked. “What kinds of coverage and capacity and what kinds of protection features might be needed in order for the commercial sector to continue to perform well in serving that component of the military architecture. I think that’s the kind of dialog we need.”
Sears said this financial misunderstanding can be chalked up to a communication gap between the “working levels” of DoD hierarchy and industry. Sears credited DoD leaders like Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center (AFSMC) chief Lt. Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski and Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) chief Gen. William Shelton for “having a vision of what they’re trying to do,” Sears said.
“It’s getting that down into the rank and file, again down at the major and colonel level, the program level, where that vision is created,” Sears said. “There has to be some change at the culture level and, to me, that is what has to be driven down by some of the leaders.”
Sears said the Pentagon’s approach to “spot market buying,” or buying bandwidth in one-year increments, stunts industry’s growth because it doesn’t know where, nor when, to invest. Sears said spot market buying doesn’t give industry a signal as to how long it is going to need that capability and/or whether there are enhancements that are needed to that capability. Sears said this also results in higher costs for DoD as they are buying limited bandwidth resources as the last minute.
“They are a spot market buyer of bandwidth, so where do you invest as an operator,” Sears said. “Do you invest in the market that is giving you one-year contracts? That is a hard sell.”
Whelan said DoD is bound by legal obligations and the congressional budgetary process. Whelan said the Air Force has many different funding sources, one of which is operations and maintenance (O&M) money appropriated by Congress. Whelan said providing satellite communications for either point-to-point or for remotely piloted aircraft (RPA) transfer from Predators and Reapers are O&M funds, which the service receives funding for only one year at a time. Whelan said currently, under the fiscal year 2013 continuing resolution (CR), the Air Force doesn’t technically have the funding.
“We have permission to spend at the rate we had last year,” Whelan said. “So while I understand her frustration, I, by law, can’t commit to a contract beyond the scope of what I have funding for. Since I’m only given money one year at a time, I can only commit to funding one year at a time.”
Whelan said as opposed to one-year deals, sometimes the Air Force will do one-year contracts with four government-option years and if the government gets the money to renew the contracts, it will do it.
“That’s the closest thing we can do to long-term commitments,” Whelan said. “Services like satellite communications don’t lend themselves well to that.”
While not a DoD commercial communications program, Sears said, in her opinion, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) canceling its EnhancedView commercial imagery contract with GeoEye (GEOY) and DigitalGlobe [DGI] sent a stark and negative message to industry. EnhancedView was a 10-year, $7.3 billion program (with government options) to allow the government to purchase unclassified imagery without having to shoulder the cost of building the satellites. Although NGA issued GeoEye and DigitalGlobe contracts in 2011, the Pentagon’s proposed FY ’13 budget called for a 50-percent cut to the EnhancedView program. This change in funding forced the two companies to consider merging and DigitalGlobe agreed to buy GeoEye for $900 million in stock and cash in July (Defense Daily, Sept. 13).
“Just reconfirms the point, why would I invest,” Sears said. “They even had a long-term contract and it got canceled. After they had spent hundreds of millions of dollars building new satellites. So yes, that sends a pretty tough message to commercial industry about if the government is really a good partner and should we invest in military capability going forward?”
Intelsat General is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Intelsat S.A.
Normal
0
false
false
false
EN-US
X-NONE
X-NONE
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:”Table Normal”;
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-parent:””;
mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin:0in;
mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:10.0pt;
font-family:”Times New Roman”,”serif”;}