WAILEA, Hawaii—As the U.S. military waits for major acquisition reform legislation, Space Force officials say their service is ahead of the curve.
“We’re anxious to see [the legislation], but I also feel like we as a Space Force are in front of that. A lot of the concepts and ideas and structure and authorities and processes, we’re already doing. So we’re in a sweet spot there to be able to take advantage of that and go even faster,” Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, leader of Space Systems Command, said in an interview on the sidelines of the AMOS conference here.
The service is amid an organizational transformation, aligning acquisition programs with mission areas under units it calls systems deltas. The change, along with the commercial strategy signed in 2024, has changed how the service’s program executives and program directors look at acquisition and commercial providers, Garrant said.
“I believe the Space Force is leading the way, and going to be better able to adapt, because we’re small,” he said. “I think we are leading the path on this idea of budget flexibility, portfolio, our whole org structure, what we’re doing with mission deltas and systems deltas and freeing up the PEOs to be strategic.”
The 15th Space Surveillance Squadron here in Maui is part of the larger Mission Delta 2, but is unique in that it has Air Force Research Laboratory personnel as part of the unit, allowing it to do operations as well as research and development. During a tour of the Maui Space Surveillance Complex, Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman told Defense One that the construct has been very effective.
“The power of an organization like this is that the unit that experiences the operational challenges is also capable of solving those problems,” Saltzman said. That may seem obvious, he said, but with rare exceptions, “it doesn’t work like that in the military.”
Usually, Saltzman said, there is an operator who is trained “to collect information or do the operations,” but they don’t have the training or resources to solve the problems they encounter. “So they have to then pitch the problem over the wall to somebody else who tries to solve it, and then it comes back, and they go, ‘Well, you kinda missed it,’ or ‘You kinda got it right.’”
Combining them saves a lot of effort, he said: “Owning the ability to fix your own problems has turned out to be a pretty powerful thing.”
Brig. Gen. Jason Bartolomei, commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory, agreed with Saltzman.
“I think the Space Force is leading the way in terms of creating these innovation pipelines,” he said. “You’re seeing something special happening, where the leader has the authority to move out technologically and match what’s happening operationally.”
The concept has also allowed the 15th SPSS to use some unconventional procurement methods, the unit’s commander said. Among the many telescopes at the unit’s complex atop Haleakala are three “Raven-class” research and development telescopes that “we bought commercial,” Lt. Col. Douglas Thornton said.
“That’s one paradigm that really helped us, is that instead of certifying complete telescope systems, we just need to certify the data, that the data is good enough for the warfighter. … So those three telescopes can help augment when our baseline telescopes are down for maintenance or repairs,” Thornton said. “I mean, you can literally, like, buy this stuff on Amazon, and you know, get it the next week.”
As part of the new organizational structure, the Space Force has stood up five systems deltas, with three more standing up in the next two months. Col. Jason West is commander of Systems Delta 85, which was activated a month ago and is focused on command, control and communication; battle management; and space intelligence.
The delta brought together four previous acquisition units, West said, which were “fielding ground-based sensors, networks, and then decision-support software, basically, that runs command and control and battle management.”
So what’s different? West said that despite thinking that “we’re already very much operating this way,” once the activation happened, they realized that “we were able to break down barriers that had been there before, and that the organization could succeed in part because of the way it was designed.”
Shannon Pallone, the program executive officer for battle management command, control and communications, said that while the structure is still very new, “we’re seeing changes on Day One. We’re seeing improvements on Day One and how that works. We’re still learning how to do it, but it’s been good and fruitful learning that I think has been really productive in the right direction”
While in Maui for AMOS, Pallone said she and West visited the new space domain awareness “TAP” lab—tools, applications, and processing—where companies are “bringing in ideas, bringing in algorithms, solving problems.”
“We’re starting to look at, how do you pipeline that? To say, bring in what you already have?” she said on the sidelines of the AMOS conference. “I would fully admit we are not A-plus at that yet, but that’s where we’re heading.”
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