Improving Integration and Synchronization of Space Acquisition and Fielding

As the newest service in the Armed Forces, one of the key dreams of america Space Force (USSF) is to boost up delivery of area abilities to outpace adversary threats. However, handing over give up‐to‐quit area functionality requires the combination and synchronization of multiple factors, the improvement and fielding of that are controlled not just with the aid of the Department of the Air Force but also by using other navy departments and federal companies.

The Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Space Acquisition and Integration (SAF/SQ) has said that enhancing the integration and synchronization of the delivery of area competencies is a priority. To assist with this precedence, the RAND Corporation’s Project AIR FORCE diagnosed current challenges and encouraged ways that USSF can facilitate the integration and synchronization of area acquisition and fielding to help the timely delivery of give up-to-give up area abilities to the Joint Force. This research improved past integration, together with any moves USSF should take that would lead to fielding greater-well timed, integrated, and synchronized warfighter competencies.

To do that, the research group explored the question from overlapping vantage factors that included the stakeholder, operator, and acquisition groups. This included a extensive literature evaluate of current research on U.S. Government space‐affiliated agencies; more than 60 semistructured interviews of subject-count number experts and senior decisionmakers for the duration of the Department of Defense, other federal authorities companies, and the non-public region; and the advent of a visible map of about ninety one of a kind stakeholders in USSF acquisition and the relationships among them.

Key Findings

• Budget instability at the program level and overall finances inflexibility make it hard to execute and deliver included and synchronized abilties.
• USSF’s potential to orchestrate and deliver a resilient and interoperable area structure is doubtful.
• Internal USSF agencies do no longer appear to be aligned and communication channels are adversely affected.
• Significant experimentation is ongoing within multiple groups devoted to innovation, however this experimentation is not visible centrally or across businesses.
• USSF desires to harness and transition the results of experiments and innovation into packages of document or into operations.

Recommendations

• Create resource-loaded roadmaps of task functionality architectures and conduct sensitivity analyses to apprehend and put together for the impacts of finances actions.
• Implement a cultural change that values extra open communique with Congress and builds alignment throughout USSF, the Department of the Air Force, the Pentagon, and the extra U.S. Area corporation.
• Define what constitutes architecture and use those definitions to file USSF undertaking statements and charters.
• Educate the united states personnel on architecture imaginative and prescient, definitions, accountable offices, and the relationships amongst systems and missions within the architecture.
• Clarify the Space Warfighting Analysis Center and Space Systems Integration Office's roles in defining machine of systems structure and in advising the Service Acquisition Executive and their group of workers.
• Conduct a group of workers observe to determine the way to create and sustain organic system-of-structures and systems engineering information.
• Formalize and approve USSF challenge statements and charters.
• Harmonize USSF functional constructs to the extent affordable and standardize project vicinity terminology.
• Require agencies involved in area acquisition to enhance visibility into their efforts.
• Implement a cultural change that values business enterprise and assignment fulfillment over private or individual software achievement.
• Create a clean vision between acquisition and user communities as to how and whilst technology need to be included into the wider capability architecture.