Space Acquisitions: Changing Environment Presents Continuing Challenges and Opportunities for DOD

For decades, space remained largely the purview of a handful of countries and mostly free from threats. But now many countries have satellites, private companies offer satellite-based services, and some countries have demonstrated they could target and destroy satellites.

Department of Defense (DOD) space systems provide critical capabilities that support military and national security operations. Such systems are expensive to acquire and field, costing billions of dollars each year. The recently established U.S. Space Force will consolidate leadership, planning, and management for selected DOD space programs, as appropriate and authorized.

Space-based capabilities—such as GPS—are fundamental to U.S. defense, national security, and civilian activities. The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has reported that the DOD has faced long-standing challenges in acquiring the space systems that support these capabilities. This has led to significant cost increases and delays. In part to speed the acquisition process, DOD added more flexible acquisition pathways, including one known as the middle tier of acquisition.

However, this pathway has trade-offs in reporting, monitoring, and oversight. For example, GAO found in 2021 that DOD had not developed an overarching data collection and reporting strategy for its middle tier of acquisition pathway, limiting DOD’s visibility into programs and hindering the quality of its congressional reporting. DOD has undertaken several initiatives to update its processes and systems for reporting acquisition data to Congress and other stakeholders.

GAO has issued reports and made several recommendations on programs managed under this pathway, including the Next Generation Overhead Persistent Infrared satellite system. In September 2021, GAO reported that the program had taken steps aimed at accelerating development, but identified challenges for this system that made its aggressive schedule difficult to achieve. GAO also found that the program had not acknowledged these risks to the schedule in its reports to Congress. Accordingly, GAO recommended that DOD enhance schedule and cost transparency to facilitate congressional decision-making.

The new acquisition process, the stand-up of the Space Force, the growth of the commercial space industry, and evolving threats in the space domain present challenges and opportunities for space acquisition efforts.

• DOD has reported making progress establishing the Space Force, but it remains to be seen if this organizational change can address GAO’s 2016 concern that space acquisition leadership was fragmented.
• As DOD has reported, a new ecosystem of private companies offering capabilities such as space launch and satellite monitoring could create challenges in monitoring space objects, among other things, but could allow DOD to contract for data or services to meet some of its needs.
• For decades, space was largely a low-threat environment, but DOD has acknowledged that today, potential adversaries continue to develop offensive space capabilities, including weapons intended to target U.S. and allied capabilities.

GAO has reviews in progress that will cover several of the key topics noted above, such as DOD’s efforts to tailor the acquisition process, leverage commercial capabilities, and address new threats.

Read the full report here.