As these near-peer competitors devote massive resources to delivering next-gen capabilities that match or surpass existing U.S. space systems, it’s forced the DoD to recognize the limits of its traditional space acquisition and look for ways it can deliver capabilities faster.

Defense News spoke recently with Mark Mohr, director of business development for Northrop Grumman, about the need for space acquisition reform.

Defense News: Can you paint a picture for why traditional space acquisition has come up short in the past?

Mohr: It’s a fairly complex question debated within the acquisition community. The fact is that the United States and its industry partners have learned many difficult lessons in the preceding 50 or 60 years: the United States is not without its share of launch or on-orbit failures. Because of the critical nature of what these space systems provide, historically there’s been a requirement to ensure that the space capabilities are ‘high reliability’. That comes with a tremendous amount of due diligence, whether it be in the design space and the requirements traceability space, and certainly from the integration and test perspective. This is typically what we refer to when we talk about Class A types of missions and Class A requirements.

The short version is that space capabilities, for the most part, have been categorized as Class A types of systems. Therefore, in order to provide all the due diligence associated with the entire life-cycle, they’ve seen inordinately long development cycles which does not allow you the ability to go at speed and match what industry is capable of — which is largely ‘design fast’ and ‘go on orbit fast’.

Defense News: What are some exciting or meaningful steps the DoD is taking to reform space acquisition?

I would say it’s multifaceted. For one, there’s a much greater appetite in accepting lower class missions to fulfill many of the mission needs. These are the lower class missions: Class B, C and D. This is important because the life-cycle of these systems — and the ability to get them up on mission — are normally much faster.

Second, whole organizations have been directed to focus on this drive. There’s a Space [Rapid Capabilities Office] RCO now whose charter is to procure operational space systems in significantly reduced time frames allowing for industry to bring forward innovative approaches and technical solutions. We know that Dr. Tournear’s [Space Development Agency] SDA is also focused on the rapid procurement and fielding of whole constellations of systems that can be built and fielded much faster. And underlying it all is a greater risk tolerance. There’s a recognition that in many cases, near-peer competitors are fielding capabilities much faster and in greater quantity than the United States. That need to deliver faster, forces onto the conversation a higher risk tolerance than normally has been accepted.

Finally, there’s a focus on companies that can build at rate because with some of these smaller or lower class missions, it opens up the ability to build space systems in quantities that has not been seen before.

Defense News: Among those developments you mentioned, what do you think will have the greatest impact?

Mohr: From an industry perspective, it’s not an either/or type of toggle. There are truly national capabilities where it’s important for both the public and government leadership to fully appreciate that there are US space capabilities that when called upon must work, guaranteed. This actually calls for a hybrid type of architecture dependent upon mission and orbital domain.

Industry can work together with the government to determine what is the right risk tolerance, and therefore, the right measure of assurance during this life-cycle so that it’s really a conversation between those that are building the systems and those that are procuring the systems.

For example, you can have systems that might be class D going at tremendous speed, but may not be able to fulfill some of the national mission capabilities. But even on some of those national capabilities — given the gains that we’ve made from both a technology perspective and a process perspective — there is the ability to quite frankly go faster than we already are.

What’s really needed on each and every program is an agreement between the government and industry on what are the best mission assurance requirements. What we would offer is continued industry outreach to further explain those procurements against the charter and how it fits into the OSD, the Space Force and the IC authorities.

Defense News: What would demonstrate to you — 6 to 12 months from now — that measurable progress was made in improving the reform and acquisition cycle?

Mohr: There’s been a lot of focus on section 804 authorities that organizations can use to go as rapidly as possible. I’ll say that articulating the number of programs that are in fact moving forward under 804, those are demonstrable programs where the Department and the IC are trying to improve the acquisition timeline cycles. That would be a process by which there should be demonstrable success because we know that it’s well underway.

I’ll also highlight that digital engineering is an initiative well underway within the Space Force. We think this is important because the digital engineering capabilities that Northrop is working on with the Space Force and SSC (Space Systems Command) are designed to take a significant chunk of time out of the life-cycle. And explaining to the Department how these programs can use this new digital engineering construct is another measurable way to show that industry has the ability to help and to procure systems faster.

This event took place on October 14, 2020

As the Department of Defense works toward multidomain operations, perhaps one of the purest manifestations of this idea is the Integrated Air and Missile Defense Battle Command system, which aims to connect any sensor to any shooter. We talked to Col Anthony Behrens about how integration can bring new capabilities to the service.

Guest Speakers:

• COL Anthony Behrens, Director, Fires Capabilities Development & Integration Directorate, U.S. Army
• Kenn Todorov, Vice President and General Manager, Combat Systems and Mission Readiness, Northrop Grumman

That change has manifested itself in new tools and new information nodes throughout each of the services.

But while the term “information warfare” can feel nebulous, members of the defense industrial base are starting to find a niche in the new market as a way to help the warfighter and to provide new tools and technology.

C4ISRNET spoke to Kev Hays, director of information warfare programs at Northrop Grumman, about the challenge of information warfare, the areas where government should partner with industry, and how to measure progress.

C4ISRNET: We’ve seen a big shift within DOD the last couple of years as the services embrace information warfare. The threat has changed, but how is information warfare different than it was five years ago?

KEV HAYS: Here’s my way of explaining the evolution of information warfare: ubiquitous and persistent. Information operations is something very specific, you’re out and you’re doing active work. Information warfare is absolutely both ubiquitous and persistent. It is constantly going on. It is the war we are in. It takes on tremendous myriad forms, but it is absolutely ubiquitous and persistent.

C4ISRNET: What does that look like?

HAYS: Let’s think about a training environment for example. In the military, we do training exercises. So if, for example, it’s an air warfare training exercise, there’s a start and end.

There is no such thing as an information warfare training environment that is not contested because it is a continuous, ubiquitous and persistent warfare area. An example would be the influx of intelligence, either gathering or misinformation that goes out via social media or electric tampering or any of these major events that have happened over the last many years that you read about.

What is unique about information warfare is that the adversary is influencing us and we are influencing the adversary as opposed to simply projecting power, disabling systems, and destroying assets.

C4ISRNET: What’s the role for industry in information warfare? Sometimes the way this is talked about, it sounds like merely an internal DOD reorganization. How do you see industry helping DOD in the information warfare space?

HAYS: You’re spot on. There is some confusion over information warfare and where industry and government fit into that big puzzle. Industry’s role really is to advance the technology, to outpace the adversaries and then make that technology usable by our sailors soldiers, airmen and Marines. It does not help if you put a technology out there that is unusable.

C4ISRNET: How does this greater emphasis on information warfare trickle down to help the war fighter?

HAYS: The fact is services are reorganizing. The question you’re asking is why is that important? For industry, it illustrates a recognition by the services that information warfare is in fact, ubiquitous and persistent, and must be a part of all warfare. That battle will be won left of launch. It is an information warrior that will achieve that win. The services have recognized that it is not a Navy surface warfare issue, and a different Navy air issue, and a different Marine issue, and a different submarine issue, it’s a warfare issue.

For the war fighter, a couple of things. First, the advent of information professionals to help us in planning an execution within battle space is tremendous. You now have a person at your side to help you with those kinds of decisions.

The other advantage is that it really provides a potential to share technologies across domains. If I’m a surface warrior and there’s this great tool or system that the air community has, it opens the aperture. It opens the availability for sharing that technology across the individual sub-services or branches within each service. That’s tremendously helpful.

C4ISRNET: There has been a movement internationally to create cyber norms and establish accepted behavior. How do you bring in partners internationally in this space? How is that different from any other type of defense cooperation?

HAYS: It’s not different from any other type of defense cooperation. You’d have to get on the same page for an architecture, you get on the same page for an operating system, that’s really system compatibility in order to have partners anywhere, internationally or domestically. The systems have to be able to talk to each other. I mentioned earlier not just getting the technology advanced but making it usable by the operator. It doesn’t matter what color the flag is that a warrior is serving or what uniform the warrior is wearing. So really, it’s the technology bridge. What are the standards? What are the operating systems program languages? It comes down to system compatibility and tying those technologies together so that the war fighter has the advantage.

C4ISRNET: What would you want to see in the next six, 12, 18 months to show measurable progress?

HAYS: Tighter partnerships between industry and the DOD. We do a lot of partnering. There are other countries and other peer adversaries who are not as encumbered as we are at that boundary between the DOD acquisition community and industry. That will require some trust. Industry needs to earn that trust and the government needs to offer that trust and back and forth. In order to co-innovate and co-develop systems that will in fact, empower our war fighters to gain the advantage and keep the advantage. So clear measures of partnership that break down the traditional barrier of contracts and requirements development. This slower-than-necessary process for getting capability and technology into the hands of the people who need it the most needs to change.

C4ISRNET: Have you seen that?

HAYS: I’ve seen some great progress. Through the use of other transactional authorities, there have been some innovative contracting steps or contracting vehicles that have been used. Some of these processes are very challenging to change. Breaking those rules down and rethinking processes and avenues for quick partnership and quick delivery will take a little bit of time. Can it be done? Absolutely. That will be my measure of success over the next several months to a year. How quickly we can partner between the government and industry.