Why a Department of the Space Force?

Over the last 20 years several issues regarding the National Security Space (NSS) organization and management have been reviewed and assessed. Both the Rumsfeld Commission in 2001 and the Allard Commission in 2009 noted that there are many pockets of excellence and positive trends within the NSS community.

However, the commissions also noted growing performance shortfalls, vulnerabilities and potential gaps in capabilities. Many of the capabilities are thin and fragile. Important space-based capabilities are currently provided by obsolete on-orbit assets, while new generation satellites have experienced unacceptable cost and schedule growth, technical performance problems and cancellations.

Many of the necessary actions to address these adverse trends, such as those identified by the 2001 Space Commission and the 2003 Defense Science Board Study on Space Acquisition, have been slow to change. There has been a lack of clear accountability and authority regarding strategies, budgets, requirements and acquisition processes across the NSS community. In other words, "no one's in charge."

To exacerbate the situation, career management practices have often been counterproductive and the technical talent pool has been insufficient. These commissions stressed the need for fundamental change in order to correct the problems. In particular, the Allard Commission recommended a top-to-bottom reform to create stronger leadership and improved management for National Security Space. In the absence of needed improvements and a lack of progress, it would appear that NSS operations should have its own organization and management structure, and that structure could become the Department of the Space Force.

This new NSS organization could do many things to reduce costs and increase operational effectiveness, while maintaining space superiority. For example, clarify lines of authority and eliminate "stovepiped" systems. A new vision is needed for NSS and that may be called "Vision 2030," a 21st Century architecture that uses an integrated approach to providing NSS services to the stakeholder community.

Such an architecture might use a single integrated and multifunctional space infrastructure that satisfies the objectives of both the warfighter and intelligence communities. Physically, this might be a multi-layered constellation of satellites that can collect ISR and other security-related information, fuse and process data, and send these data to end users on the ground.

The new Space Force might become the single source of all needed NSS information for a variety of ground and space operations. All defense and intelligence agencies could then share resources in a cost-effective and efficient manner.

Related Links
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