Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Wall Street Journal (wsj.com)
November 7, 2007 By Andy Pasztor
LOS ANGELES -- The Air Force, facing escalating budget pressures on its satellite programs, has launched a drive to gain control over development, construction and operational support of nearly all national-security space systems.
The new, long-term campaign, sketched out in a speech here earlier this week by Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Hamel, the service's top uniformed space acquisition official, seeks to roll back the role of the Army and the Navy in overseeing future satellite programs. It also envisions more direct Air Force control over other, multibillion-dollar surveillance satellites desired by the U.S. intelligence community.
Critics are bound to dismiss the ideas as part of a bureaucratic turf battle. And similar efforts in the past have gotten bogged down inside the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. But the latest moves, even if only partially successful, could mean significant changes in the way space programs are run and how the nation's largest aerospace contractors may compete for future contracts.
Gen. Hamel indicated that he and other Air Force leaders eventually hope to persuade Congress and Pentagon brass to unify virtually all defense and intelligence space efforts under a single umbrella: Air Force organizations that already develop, procure and sustain many space systems. Such a shift is necessary, he told an industry conference, to reduce the "fractious infighting, if you will, between various organizations" that now mars space policy and acquisitions, and to create "a more coherent framework" for assuring U.S. space superiority.
The question is "how do we better unify" policy and budgeting, Gen. Hamel said, in the face of current arrangements that have produced "many more actors" in the defense space arena with "increasingly fragmented roles and responsibilities."
Under today's practices, the Navy buys some of the high-frequency satellite communications systems it relies on, while the Army is slated to oversee some of the advanced communications networks essential to lighter, more mobile ground forces.
Meanwhile, intelligence agencies and their champions in Congress have been battling with the Air Force over how to develop, and who will end up controlling, proposed spy satellite constellations. The friction has grown to the point that House and Senate committees earlier this year voted out widely divergent bills for future space radar efforts. In addition to sharp disagreements over funding levels, the bills also clashed over which organization should be in charge of development.
In a brief interview after his speech on Tuesday, Gen. Hamel indicated support for ideas circulating on Capitol Hill to fence off military space programs, so they can't be raided for other purposes. "I personally believe there is value in looking at the totality of space resources," he said, "instead of having them fragmented" in different budget accounts.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates is considering other changes as well. One is a return to space organization principles used and then abandoned by the Bush administration, such as a single, unified civilian leadership structure in charge of buying both military and intelligence satellites.
One argument increasingly used by the Air Force to expand its authority is the need to develop new ways to defend space assets in the future. In one of the bluntest explanations of that argument in an unclassified forum, Col. Gary Henry, vice commander of the space superiority wing at the Space and Missile Systems Center commanded by Gen. Hamel, told the conference that the Air Force is looking for various ways not only to defend against, but to attack potential space adversaries. "We're going to have to defend aggressively," Col. Henry said, because recent advances by China present "a very clear signal we no longer have sanctuary in space."
The Air Force, among other things, is considering developing a new suite of onboard satellite sensors able to warn the Pentagon, U.S. allies and potentially even commercial satellite operators about natural or man-made threats in space.
The latest Air Force thrust partly reflects that the service believes it has recovered from the worst of its space acquisition problems, which led to years of huge overruns, extensive delays and lack of credibility with lawmakers. "We had some things we didn't do very well for about ten years," Brig. General Ellen Pawlikowski told the conference Tuesday. But "we now actually have a solid group of cost estimators" in place to develop reliable program budgets, she said, while the lingering technical and budget problems from that earlier period are "getting less and less."
November 7, 2007 By Andy Pasztor
LOS ANGELES -- The Air Force, facing escalating budget pressures on its satellite programs, has launched a drive to gain control over development, construction and operational support of nearly all national-security space systems.
The new, long-term campaign, sketched out in a speech here earlier this week by Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael Hamel, the service's top uniformed space acquisition official, seeks to roll back the role of the Army and the Navy in overseeing future satellite programs. It also envisions more direct Air Force control over other, multibillion-dollar surveillance satellites desired by the U.S. intelligence community.
Critics are bound to dismiss the ideas as part of a bureaucratic turf battle. And similar efforts in the past have gotten bogged down inside the Pentagon and on Capitol Hill. But the latest moves, even if only partially successful, could mean significant changes in the way space programs are run and how the nation's largest aerospace contractors may compete for future contracts.
Gen. Hamel indicated that he and other Air Force leaders eventually hope to persuade Congress and Pentagon brass to unify virtually all defense and intelligence space efforts under a single umbrella: Air Force organizations that already develop, procure and sustain many space systems. Such a shift is necessary, he told an industry conference, to reduce the "fractious infighting, if you will, between various organizations" that now mars space policy and acquisitions, and to create "a more coherent framework" for assuring U.S. space superiority.
The question is "how do we better unify" policy and budgeting, Gen. Hamel said, in the face of current arrangements that have produced "many more actors" in the defense space arena with "increasingly fragmented roles and responsibilities."
Under today's practices, the Navy buys some of the high-frequency satellite communications systems it relies on, while the Army is slated to oversee some of the advanced communications networks essential to lighter, more mobile ground forces.
Meanwhile, intelligence agencies and their champions in Congress have been battling with the Air Force over how to develop, and who will end up controlling, proposed spy satellite constellations. The friction has grown to the point that House and Senate committees earlier this year voted out widely divergent bills for future space radar efforts. In addition to sharp disagreements over funding levels, the bills also clashed over which organization should be in charge of development.
In a brief interview after his speech on Tuesday, Gen. Hamel indicated support for ideas circulating on Capitol Hill to fence off military space programs, so they can't be raided for other purposes. "I personally believe there is value in looking at the totality of space resources," he said, "instead of having them fragmented" in different budget accounts.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates is considering other changes as well. One is a return to space organization principles used and then abandoned by the Bush administration, such as a single, unified civilian leadership structure in charge of buying both military and intelligence satellites.
One argument increasingly used by the Air Force to expand its authority is the need to develop new ways to defend space assets in the future. In one of the bluntest explanations of that argument in an unclassified forum, Col. Gary Henry, vice commander of the space superiority wing at the Space and Missile Systems Center commanded by Gen. Hamel, told the conference that the Air Force is looking for various ways not only to defend against, but to attack potential space adversaries. "We're going to have to defend aggressively," Col. Henry said, because recent advances by China present "a very clear signal we no longer have sanctuary in space."
The Air Force, among other things, is considering developing a new suite of onboard satellite sensors able to warn the Pentagon, U.S. allies and potentially even commercial satellite operators about natural or man-made threats in space.
The latest Air Force thrust partly reflects that the service believes it has recovered from the worst of its space acquisition problems, which led to years of huge overruns, extensive delays and lack of credibility with lawmakers. "We had some things we didn't do very well for about ten years," Brig. General Ellen Pawlikowski told the conference Tuesday. But "we now actually have a solid group of cost estimators" in place to develop reliable program budgets, she said, while the lingering technical and budget problems from that earlier period are "getting less and less."