WASHINGTON\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Space, for US\u00a0House Strategic Forces Subcommittee Chairman Mike Rogers, is the next frontier.
The reorganization, as envisioned, would help the US catch up with adversaries, taking into account the emerging and essential role of space in potential future wars and in domestic commerce and communications. Space management, which has long been fragmented, is unable to keep pace with new challenges, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rogers said he was particularly frustrated by the GAO report\u2019s finding that it takes six to eight years for the US to field a new capability to space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While he doesn\u2019t expect government to be as fast as the private sector, “we\u2019ve got to figure out how to make the acquisition process more nimble and rapid and get the capabilities in space we need,” Rogers said. “When you look at the bureaucracy and the fragmentation in space, it explains why.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
China, according to a report from the US military to Congress, has been developing anti-satellite lasers, jammers and missiles. Without referencing China directly, Rogers stressed the need for the US to catch up and develop defensive and offensive capabilities “to be a counterbalance” and a deterrent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The next war, space will be one of the first things our adversaries go after, taking our eyes and ears out,” Rogers said. “We don\u2019t have enough resilience or the ability to respond in like kind. Our adversaries have gotten offensive capability and we\u2019ve never. It\u2019s not like we\u2019re weaponizing space, it\u2019s already been weaponized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“They need to understand that if you go against our space assets, you will never get them all, we will make you pay an unacceptable price and we can get all of yours. That\u2019s kind of the goal.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Each of the armed services has a little bit of control of space, Rogers said. To optimize it, Rogers is seeing an organizational structure in which “there is someone at the top who comes to work every day and their priority is space.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Right now, the closest thing the Defense Department has to a top space official is the Air Force secretary, who as of 2015 also functions as the principal DoD space advisor\u00a0(PDSA)\u00a0responsible for overseeing the implementation and funding of the Pentagon\u2019s space strategy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The GAO has questioned whether the PDSA has the authorities necessary to unify the department\u2019s space initiatives, but Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James, who currently inhabits the role, said progress is being made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“If you look at results over the last few years, we have put billions of additional dollars into space, space resiliency, the situational awareness in space. So there have been a lot of additional focus, a lot of additional dollars put to space,” she told Defense News in a Dec. 8 interview.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
The Joint Interagency Combined Space Operations Center (JICSPOC), created in 2015 to conduct war-gaming and experimentation efforts that integrate the military\u2019s space capabilities, is another positive step forward, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In its 2015 report, the GAO examined several different concepts for space management, including merging all military space acquisition and operations into a “defense space agency” or creating a brand-new military space department, complete with civilian secretary and separate budget. The agency acknowledged that pursuing any of those options could result in “significant short-term disruption to DOD\u2019s space organizational structure, roles and responsibilities,” but given enduring challenges, “proposals such as these might deserve a closer look if the new PDSA role does not prove effective.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n
James argued that the Air Force is especially well-suited to play a key leadership role in the DoD space enterprise because it manages the majority of the military\u2019s space assets, and all of the service\u2019s platforms are heavily dependent on space.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“If you were to take that away and put that over here in some new organization, you\u2019ve just splintered the team,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Any of these approaches \u2014 a new assistant secretary, or a new SOCOM-like structure, or a new this or a new that \u2014 that would be standing up a brand-new organization, which would mean more people, more expense, more everything, which kind of flies in the face of trying to be more efficient, trying to reduce whenever possible. So that would be a whole other expenditure that somebody would have to figure out how to pay for,” she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
James was more open to changes that would strengthen the role of the next PDSA by giving that official more authority over policy and acquisition decisions. That would strengthen the existing space-management infrastructure without adding to the Pentagon\u2019s budget, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bureaucratic inertia will be an impediment, Rogers predicted, which is why the next defense secretary will have to be convinced.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Nobody\u2019s going to want to turn loose any of their funding authority, nobody\u2019s going to want to turn loose any of their control,” Rogers said. “We\u2019ll just have to make it happen. That\u2019s why the secretary of defense \u2014\u00a0the top\u2019s going to have to buy in and say if you don\u2019t like it, that\u2019s bad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“We don\u2019t know what it’s going to be, but I can just tell you we\u2019ve had resistance from people who like the status quo. Whether its working or not is not their issue.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n
For the aerospace industry, the changes will be aimed at making it easier to work with DoD “because it is just unacceptably burdensome now … many in the commercial sector don\u2019t want to fool with the defense space,” Rogers said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
That includes a different acquisition structure than is seen in most of DoD, one that is more agile and responsive. Rogers would like to see more dialogue with industry about what\u2019s feasible before the Pentagon offers a solicitation for proposals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Technology is changing so rapidly, there needs to be a lot of communication back and forth about what is doable,” Rogers said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“Up until a year ago the private sector was having a tough time even talking to [DoD], and I had them come and sit down \u2014 me and Jim Cooper. We invited eight different major satellite companies, all folks who interact with DoD space and found it frustrating. It was helpful.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
US House Strategic Forces Subcommittee Chairman Mike Rogers told Defense News he plans in 2017 to spearhead a major reorganization of the way the US government manages space capabilities \u2014 yielding changes that are \u201cvery disruptive\u201d but ultimately positive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":66068,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-noindex":"","_yoast_wpseo_meta-robots-nofollow":"","_yoast_wpseo_canonical":"","_acf":"","_yoast_wpseo_primary_category":23,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","_smg_distribution_targets":{"2":{"categories":["your-military","news"],"primary_category":"your-military"},"4":{"categories":["news"],"primary_category":"news"}}},"categories":[8,11,23,48],"tags":[],"coauthors":[3446,3384],"class_list":["post-29478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-congress","category-global","category-space","category-the-americas"],"acf":{"subheadline":"","legacy_arc_id":"LTWPQ4ZVM5GQ3PFBV3CO6NQROM","arc_canonical_url":"\/space\/2016\/12\/14\/big-space-reorganization-coming-house-strategic-forces-chairman-mike-rogers-says\/","remove_feature_photo":false,"is_sponsored":false,"subtype":"","redirect_url":"","disable_inline_ads":false,"native_logo_pretext":"Presented By:"},"yoast_head":"\n