WASHINGTON — The Biden administration has officially nominated Frank Kendall to serve as secretary of the Air Force and Gina Ortiz Jones for undersecretary of the Air Force.

The announcement, made by the White House on Tuesday afternoon, confirmed reporting by Defense News earlier that morning.

Kendall is best known as the Pentagon’s top acquisition official during the Obama administration from 2012 to 2016. As undersecretary of defense for acquisition, technology and logistics, he wrote a series of “Better Buying Power” initiatives aimed at reforming the acquisition process to make it more agile.

Throughout his career, Kendall held many positions within the Defense Department, including principal deputy undersecretary from 2010 to 2012. He also held roles in the defense industry, including as Raytheon’s vice president of engineering during the mid-1990s.

An Army veteran and human rights attorney, Kendall served as one of the earliest advisers to the Biden team on defense issues, and was long rumored to be a contender for a senior Defense Department or service secretary position.

Although Kendall served in the Army, much of his work as the Pentagon’s top weapons buyer centered on Air Force and aerospace programs. He was sharply critical of the Lockheed Martin-made F-35 Joint Strike Fighter, which was going through a troubled development period, famously calling the decision to put it into production “acquisition malpractice.” He also oversaw the restructuring of the Air Force’s OCX program, which builds modern ground stations for next-generation GPS satellites.

Jones, while a relative newcomer to the Pentagon, brings a wide variety of experience from other government agencies. She served in the Air Force from 2003 to 2006 as an intelligence officer, and she deployed to Iraq. In 2008, she moved to the Defense Intelligence Agency as an adviser. She then held multiple positions in the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative.

Jones ran for Congress in 2018 and 2020, becoming the Democratic Party’s nominee for Texas’ 23rd congressional district, but lost to the Republican contenders both times.

A Filipino American, Jones has in the past talked about the challenges of being gay while serving under the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” military policy. If confirmed, she would become the first woman of color to become the undersecretary of the Air Force.

Both civilians would lead the Air Force during a critical moment. Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. C.Q. Brown hopes to bring about a transformation of the service, optimizing it to be able to take on advanced Russian and Chinese threats. However, he has acknowledged these changes can only occur if cuts are made — both to ongoing programs that are no longer relevant as well as to the existing aircraft fleet.

The Air Force has historically struggled to get its message to Congress. Kendall and Jones would likely play a key role in helping to convey the service’s strategic aims to lawmakers.

After the nominations were made official, House Armed Services Committee chairman Adam Smith, (D-Wash.), issued a statement declaring his support for both nominees.

““Frank Kendall is exactly the kind of public servant we need at the helm of the Air Force at a time when the service is navigating so many unique challenges, including effective acquisition to meet our nation’s future threats,” he said. “With more than 40 years of experience in defense and national security, and with a particular focus on acquisition policy during his tenure in the Obama administration, I cannot think of a better, more equipped leader to tackle these issues head on.”

Smith also praised Jones’ experiences as an Air Force veteran and stated that her nomination shows the Biden administration’s commitment “to building a diverse Department of Defense that reflects the American population.”

Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Jack Reed, D-R.I., also expressed support for Kendall’s nomination. The two graduated from West Point together in 1971.

“Frank is a proven, effective leader.  He’s got the skill, experience, integrity, and temperament you want from the top civilian leader of the Air Force,” Reed said in a statement.

Aaron Mehta in Washington contributed to this story.

On Wednesday, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. David Goldfein said he was “very concerned about the Ligado decision,” adding those concerns are shared with Gen. Jay Raymond, the first head of the U.S. Space Force.

“We as a nation, and I would offer as a [world], rely on GPS to do so much that affects far more than military operations,” Goldfein said. “This is our quality of life. This is how we run businesses. This is how we fly airplanes. This is the ATM that requires that timing signal to get money. This is the blue dot on your phone that allows you to get from point A to point B, so we have come to just rely completely on GPS.”

On Monday, the FCC voted 5-0 in favor of Ligado’s plan, which would allow the company to use L-band — a range of frequencies between 1 to 2 GHz, on which GPS relies in order to penetrate weather and dense vegetation. The company wants to use L-band as part of its plan to expand America’s 5G capabilities, or next-generation connectivity.

The Defense Department and other government agencies have opposed the proposal for almost a decade over concerns it would impact GPS. C4ISRNET first broke the news April 10 that the FCC would move forward with Ligado’s request.

“The best way I’ve heard it described — I’m a philosophy major and this works for me — if you’re trying to have a quiet conversation and in the next room is a 500-watt speaker blaring music at you: That’s a visual of what potentially could be the interference with this GPS signal that absolutely has got to be pristine, and the world relies on,” Goldfein said. “So I am very concerned about it, and [Chief of Space Operations for the U.S. Space Force Gen. John “Jay”] Raymond and I are looking at different mitigation steps.”

Goldfein didn’t go into details about what those steps might entail. Later in the day, Mark Lewis, the Defense Department’s director of research and engineering for modernization, said he hadn’t talked with Goldfein yet on next steps, but expressed similar sentiments about the Ligado plan.

“It’s obviously a concern. Our ability to operate not only in space but in spectrum is critical. So I guess what I would tell you is right now we’re considering what the implications will be and considering what the impacts will be,” Lewis said at an event hosted by the Mitchell Institute.

It’s something “we’re working pretty actively,” Lewis added.

Outside of the technical mitigation efforts, there may be policy efforts underway to try and block L-band use by Ligado. In an exclusive op-ed for C4ISRNET, leaders of the House and Senate Armed Services committees warned that Ligado’s plan could ultimately “cost taxpayers and consumers billions of dollars and require the replacement of current GPS equipment just as we are trying to get our economy back on its feet quickly.”

“We encourage the FCC to withdraw its approval of Ligado’s application and take this opportunity to work with the NTIA [National Telecommunications and Information Administration] and other federal agencies, including the departments of Defense and Transportation, to find a solution that will both support commercial broadband expansion and protect national security assets. Moreover, we expect the FCC to resolve Department of Defense concerns before moving forward, as required by law,” the lawmakers wrote.

“If they do not, and unless President [Donald] Trump intervenes to stop this from moving forward, it will be up to Congress to clean up this mess.”

During a Wednesday news conference, Ellen Lord warned that it “is critically important that we understand that during this crisis, the [defense-industrial base] is vulnerable to adversarial capital, so we need to ensure that companies can stay in business without losing their technology.”

The Pentagon over the last several years has become increasingly vocal about concerns that foreign nations — primarily China — are investing in U.S. startup companies whose technologies could have national security applications. Those startups have been willing to accept Chinese funds in exchange for Beijing having ownership or access to certain technologies.

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Several times the officials were asked if there is a specific threat they are seeing from foreign investment at this moment, but both Lord and Jen Santos, deputy assistant secretary of defense for industrial policy, spoke only in general terms.

“I think it presents a greater attack surface, if you will, as there is uncertainty especially with small businesses as to whether their contracts will continue,” Lord said of the current pandemic. “To basically mitigate that uncertainty, that’s why we’re being forward-leaning and over-communicating, probably, to say: ‘We are open.’ ”

Trae Stephens, a partner in the venture capital Founders Fund and a co-founder of Anduril Technologies, says China will “probably” try to take advantage of the economic downturn.

“The funding environment in the U.S., particularly without an articulated plan beyond ‘day-to-day,’ will not be great for companies getting squeezed, and there will likely be good opportunities for China to swoop in and save the day,” he said, adding that the Defense Department’s instinct to focus on supporting the major defense primes first may exacerbate the problem.

“If this happens, it will be because of ‘wagon-circling,’ and we’ll only have ourselves to blame,” he warned.

The Pentagon has attempted to counter Chinese economic influence in two primary ways. The first is the use of the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, or CFIUS, which a defensive tool that allows the government to block a foreign investment attempt on national security grounds. The second, still in the early stages, is the Trusted Capital Marketplace program, which seeks to find “patriotic investors” who will put money toward supporting companies that fill a gap identified by the department, such as small unmanned systems.

Over the past few weeks, two trusted capital events were hosted virtually, said Santos, who also indicated a concern that the CFIUS office may be impacted by the coronavirus outbreak, without going into detail.

“To protect our industrial base, we have tools to combat adversarial capital, like strengthening and expanding national security investment reviews under the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, referred to as CFIUS, [and those tools] are more important than ever,” she said. “We simply cannot afford to let this period of uncertainty eat into reviews that for investments are shifting into hyper-vigilance.”

Textron Aviation mostly produces commercial business jets, turboprops and piston-engine aircraft through its Beechcraft, Cessna and Hawker brands. However, it also produces a number of military-specific aircraft, such as the Beechcraft T-6 Texan trainer used for basic pilot training by the U.S. Air Force and the AT-6 Wolverine, a weaponized version of that aircraft, and the Scorpion jet.

News of the furlough was first reported by The Wichita Eagle, which also detailed number of workers slated to lose work. Textron has declined to specify how many workers will be furloughed or the functional areas of the business that will be impacted.

Textron Aviation spokeswoman Sarah White said support for contracts would move forward, though with few details. The Air Force on Monday awarded Textron Aviation a $70 million contract for two AT-6 planes, training and support. That aircraft is manufactured at its plant in Wichita, Kan.

“We are abiding by the requirements established by the DoD and our partner nations, as well as the protocols implemented across U.S. and customer bases worldwide,” she said in a written statement to Defense News. “We will continue to support our Defense customers according to our funded contract requirements.”

More generally speaking, the furlough “will allow us to do our part in mitigating and containing the spread of the COVID-19 through social distancing, while continuing to support our customers,” White said. The company is also “limiting large group meetings, increasing daily cleaning of its facilities, restricting travel, and cancelling our participation in several global meetings and events” in response to the pandemic.

The furlough will last from March 23 until May 29, but each impacted employees will only lose four weeks of work, she said.

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon is seeking to divert $3.8 billion, largely from its fiscal 2020 weapons procurement budget, in order to fund President Donald Trump’s border wall, according to a reprogramming request to congress obtained by Defense News.

Among the victims of the cuts: a mass of aircraft purchases including F-35 joint strike fighters, C-130J cargo aircraft, MQ-9 Reaper drones and P-8 maritime surveillance planes, as well as ground vehicles and naval priorities — choices that drew quick, bipartisan condemnation from key defense lawmakers as reports of the plan filtered out Thursday.

Overall, the plan would shift $2.202 billion in FY20 defense appropriations and $1.629 billion in FY20 overseas contingency operations funding towards the wall, a key priority from president Donald Trump ahead of the November presidential elections.

Air Force and Navy aviation spending takes the brunt of the cuts proposed by the Pentagon, with aircraft procurement going down by $558 million for Navy and Marine Corps and $861 million for the Air Force. Importantly, all of the funding decreases target items that were specifically added by Congress during the budgeting process, which could incur rancor from lawmakers.

For the Navy, the Pentagon would cut two of the six F-35B short takeoff and landing aircraft added to the FY20 budget by Congress and two MV-22 Ospreys, stating that “current funding is more than sufficient to keep the production line open.” It also seeks to eliminate funding for one of the nine P-8A Poseidon surveillance aircraft funded in FY20, stating that the additional aircraft is “[in] excess to the 117 aircraft required.”

In the Air Force’s budget, the Pentagon slashed funding for four of the eight C-130Js added by Congress for the Reserve and Air National Guard. The department stated that funding for those planes can be rescheduled to fiscal year 2021, when the period of performance for the associated contract starts.

The request would eliminate eight MQ-9 Reaper drones, culling most of the funding added by Congress for an increase of 12 MQ-9s. “The program is currently undergoing a strategic review,” the department stated in written justification, referring to an ongoing debate within the Air Force about how many Reapers to buy and retain over the next decade. “Procurement, if necessary, can be rescheduled to a later fiscal year.” Combatant commanders have consistently said they need more surveillance assets around the globe.

It also strips $156 million for advanced procurement for the F-35A and removes $180 million for light attack aircraft for the Air Force, which the service has decided against procuring but has been widely supported by lawmakers as a low-cost alternative for the counter-terrorism fight.

The Army would stand to lose $100 million in funding for National Guard Humvee modernization and $194.5 million in Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck funding. However, with the Humvee set to be replaced by JLTV, the Army is unlikely to be heavily impacted by these funds being shifted around.

The reprogramming request also cuts $650 million in advanced procurement funding for an America-class Amphibious Assault Ship, LHA-9, which is being built in Mississippi at Ingalls Shipbuilding. On its website, Huntington Ingalls Industries says the advanced funding provided by Congress, “enables a hot production line and a supplier base of 457 companies in 39 states to build this powerful warship.”

The reprogramming also cuts funding one expeditionary fast transport ship, which is built in Alabama at Austal USA, which has been an area of interest for the powerful Republican chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee, Sen. Richard Shelby. The ship was deemed “excess to current programmatic need,” the reprogramming document says.

“The procurement exceeds the program-of-record requirement,” the document reads. “This is a congressional special interest item.”

In addition, the National Guard and reserves would lose about $1.3 billion in what the reprogramming request describes as unnecessary funding, given historic underexecution of prior year funds.

Congressional reaction

Last year, the Defense Department had budgets, largely for military construction projects, diverted into funding a stretch of the wall project. Those project cuts included the rebuilding of several DoD schools both in the U.S. and abroad, special operations training centers in Europe and Hurricane Maria relief for Puerto Rico National Guard facilities. Overall, more than 100 projects had funding delayed.

Asked on Tuesday about a potential reprogramming of defense funds to pay for the wall, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said: “We did receive the request from DHS, that’s all I’ll say right now. We’re working our way through the process, we’re doing all those things we need to do. So when we’re ready to make an announcement, we’ll make an announcement.”

Both Democrat and Republican leaders immediately criticized the move as an attempt to usurp Congress’ power of the purse that would endanger national security.

House Appropriations Committee Chairwoman Nita M. Lowey, D-N.Y., and Defense Appropriations Subcommittee Chairman Pete Visclosky, D-Ind., said in a joint statement that Trump was, “once again disrespecting the separation of powers and endangering our security by raiding military resources to pay for his wasteful border wall,” and “orchestrating this backdoor mechanism to prop up a political vanity project.”

In a separate statement, Texas Rep. Mac Thornberry, the top Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, said he supports building a border wall, but slammed the Pentagon for going against congressional direction for spending defense dollars, saying the unilateral movement of already approved spending by Congress “undermines the principle of civilian control of the military and is in violation of the separation of powers within the Constitution.”

“The re-programming announced today is contrary to Congress’s constitutional authority, and I believe that it requires Congress to take action,” Thornberry said. “I will be working with my colleagues to determine the appropriate steps to take.”

In a statement, Pentagon spokesman Lt. Col. Chris Mitchell “The Department of Defense is committed to supporting the Department of Homeland Security’s efforts to secure the southern border by constructing fences and roads and installing lighting to block drug smuggling corridors.

“Last month we received a new request from the Department of Homeland Security asking for assistance in blocking drug-smuggling corridors on Federal land along the southern border of the United States,” Mitchell said. “In response, the Secretary of Defense authorized support of $3.8B to build approximately 177 miles of fencing that will help to protect our borders. We will continue to support DHS and other agencies as needed to keep our homeland is secure.”

Jen Judson in Washington contributed to this report.

The goal of the briefing, which was also attended by Defense Secretary Mark Esper, was to inform the president of upcoming milestones as the Space Force gradually comes into being, said Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman.

“Gen. Raymond has a very specific, very thorough plan on things that need to take place — moving pay systems, assigning individuals to the Space Force, looking at basing, figuring out if we’re going to be transferring bases to the Space Force,” Hoffman told reporters.

The meeting was about “laying out for the president what the process looks like — what are the next steps, what are the things that are going to be happening over the next couple months — to give him an expectation,” he added. “This is something [Trump has] been very forward leaning on and is something that he is interested in, so we’ve been trying to keep him informed.”

Trump established the Space Force on Dec. 20 after signing the fiscal 2020 defense authorization bill, which created the Space Force as an independent sixth branch of the military under the Department of the Air Force. During the signing ceremony, Trump also tapped Raymond as the service’s first chief of space operations.

On Jan. 14, Vice President Mike Pence officially swore in Raymond as the Space Force’s first service chief and a new member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Raymond also leads U.S. Space Command at Peterson Air Force Base, Colorado, giving him the responsibility of overseeing the organization, training and equipping of space forces as well as their operations.

While Hoffman did not elaborate on upcoming milestones as the Space Force nears the end of its first 30 days, the service is approaching a Feb. 1 deadline by which Air Force Secretary Barbara Barrett must submit to Congress a proposed organizational structure.

Other tasks, such as devising a Space Force logo, uniform and its official song, are still in progress.

Asked whether the Defense Department had considered starting a contest where service members could submit ideas for the Space Force’s anthem, Hoffman said: “That entire idea makes me uncomfortable. I will check with Gen. Raymond the next time I see him on anthem plans.”

WASHINGTON — Defense Secretary suggested European allies replenish the $771 million meant to shore up Europe’s defensive posture against Russia to fund President Donald Trump’s U.S.-Mexico border barrier.

The announcement is sure to jar European allies, where NATO members have nervously watched the president’s on-again, off-again commitment to the alliance. And it could deal a blow to the narrative among allies that Trump’s boisterous rhetoric should be taken with a grain of salt, given that money has kept flowing from Washington despite trans-Atlantic disagreements.

Half of the $3.6 billion for the border wall would come from dozens of U.S. military construction projects, and the other half would come from projects in Europe and the Pacific. In Europe, there were roughly 40 projects, including training facilities for special forces in Estonia and aviation infrastructure in Germany, Hungary and Slovakia.

Trump is gambling that Congress and allies will eventually restore the money used for the wall, he originally said Mexico would pay for. Defense Secretary Mark Esper suggested that European nations should consider funding projects in their countries.

“The message that I’ve been carrying, since when I was acting secretary to today, has been about the increase in burden sharing,” Esper told reporters in London late on Thursday.

“So part of the message will be ‘Look, if you’re really concerned then maybe you should look to cover those projects for us’ because that’s going to build infrastructure in many cases in their countries,” he added.

As it stands, the maneuver will weaken NATO efforts to deter Russia, feed growing doubts that America would come to Europe’s defense and undermine extensive plans to strengthen NATO’s eastern flank, according to former U.S. Ambassador to NATO Ivo Daalder, now president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs.

“If you looked at the state of the alliance, you could say the bad news was the president’s rhetoric was problematic for alliance unity, but the administration’s growing investment suggested on a sub-political level the alliance was getting stronger,” Daalder said Thursday. “I can no longer make that argument because we’ve just [signaled] we’re going to cut back on that investment.”

“There may be a good burden-sharing argument to be had, and that reinforcing NATO forces to the east is a shared obligation,” Daalder said, “but the way to do that is to sit down and decide what projects we’ll do, how we’ll do it together and who’ll pay for it―and we did, but now we’re reneging on that deal.”

On Thursday, Trump’s political opponents highlighted how the move follows his recent decisions to hold up $250 million in military aid to Ukraine and to abruptly cancel his trip to Poland to deal with Hurricane Dorian, sending Vice President Mike Pence in his place. Trump had been scheduled to attend an event last weekend remembering the anniversary of Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland, which led France and Britain to declare war two days later.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said he found it “galling and appalling” that Trump had secured multiple wins for an “American foe,” Russian President Vladimir Putin, in just two weeks.

“President Trump is, yet again, putting Vladimir Putin before the security of the American people and our allies,” Schumer said. “Cutting the funding used to reinforce our trusted European allies against Russian aggression in order to advance the president’s politically motivated vanity project — that he promised Mexico would pay for — is outrageous, wrong and weakens our national security. Congress will not stand for the president usurping our exclusive power of the purse.”

The targeted projects in Poland illustrate how the seemingly disparate list of smaller construction plans — a runway here, an ammo-storage bunker there — is actually part of a larger strategy, coordinated with NATO, to strengthen Europe’s defensive posture along the eastern front. Putting anything about a “rail extension and rail head” on the table — some line items named — could jeopardize ongoing plans for a cross-border transportation network capable of delivering heavy weaponry deep into Poland.

Such a staging area is envisioned by NATO officials near the country’s town of Powidz. Defense News previously reported that the site’s rail connectivity is vital to the alliance’s plan for a major ground-forces hub.

“Until the railhead is developed, it will be a limiting factor,” retired Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, a former commander of U.S. Army forces in Europe, told Defense News earlier this year as the Trump administration made a previous attempt to siphon funds away from Polish rail work.

Notably, the Pentagon’s list also curtails funding meant for storage facilities where the service could pre-position “deployable airbase systems,” or DABS. The Air Force had planned to build such warehouses — which would store vehicles, temporary housing and other equipment needed to whip up an expeditionary airfield — at Spangdahlem Air Base, Germany; Sanem, Luxembourg; and Royal Air Force Fairford, England. All have been deferred.

During a July interview, Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Dave Goldfein pointed to “base-in-a-box” concepts like DABS as an example of how the Air Force could better disperse operations in Europe, as well as other regions such as the Asia-Pacific and Africa.

The delayed programs were largely chosen either because they were upgrades or replacements to existing facilities, a senior defense official told reporters in a Pentagon briefing Wednesday, or because their contract award dates are not scheduled for a year or more.

“We remain committed to supporting our allies and partners,” Air Force spokeswoman Ann Stefanek said. “The affected projects are still authorized and important but have been identified as having delays that would allow their deferment without immediate impact to our mission.”

One official from an allied nation whose project is listed said the U.S. State Department privately communicated that it would work to secure other unspecified funds to avoid construction delays, and that there was no request for it to replace any of the diverted funding. That official expressed frustration at the administration’s mixed messages.

Aaron Mehta of Defense News and Meghann Myers of Military Times contributed to this report.

Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Joe Dunford and U.S. Strategic Command chief Gen. John Hyten appeared together in front of the Senate Armed Services Committee to argue on behalf of the Space Force.

Committee Chairman Jim Inhofe, R-Okla., noted at the top of the hearing that the event was a rarity — in that senators seemed to genuinely come into it with an open mind, as opposed to looking to score political points. And that feeling did indeed play throughout the almost two hour and 50 minute hearing, with members attempting to dig for clarity about the potential new military branch.

Going into the hearing, the Pentagon was well aware that this might be the best chance to sway skeptics. A read-ahead memo for Shanahan, drafted by Robert Hood, assistant secretary of defense for legislative affairs, called the hearing “the Department’s opportunity to sell SASC on Space Force.”

The document, which was obtained by Defense News and several other outlets, provided details on what each of the SASC members had said publicly — and, in some cases, privately in routine office calls — about the Space Force. It also offered guidance on the questions those lawmakers could ask.

“While Chairman Inhofe and Ranking Member [Jack] Reed have expressed skepticism, many members have yet to form an opinion or speak publicly on the proposal. Members have signaled support for both U.S. SPACECOM and SDA, but they have not yet been sold on the idea of a Space Force,” Hood wrote, using an acronym for the Space Development Agency.

“Most notably, while members seem to have an understanding of the space threat, the perception is that the Department has not been successful in explaining to them WHY the Space Force is necessary to address that threat.”

To be successful in selling the Space Force to Inhofe, Shanahan should be prepared to explain how Space Force could solve current space-related problems and why it would be worth the added cost, Hood wrote.

Reed, D-R.I., “fears Space Force ‘would just add bureaucracy without effect,’” Hood wrote. Meanwhile Sens. Kevin Cramer, R-N.D.; Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn.; Joni Ernst, R-Iowa; and Rick Scott, R-Fla., had signaled they are willing to support the proposal.

Universally, members agreed that space is important, and not one expressed doubts about the importance of a U.S. Space Command, a combatant command that came about as the result of congressional orders. But the Space Force as a new branch was met with skepticism — early returns do not seem to have netted the results for which the Pentagon hoped.

Sen. Angus King, I-Maine, said he is “genuinely undecided, although as you can tell, I’m skeptical.” Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., expressly said she did not see the benefit of a new branch of the military. Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., told the panel that creating a new branch of the military “doesn’t make any sense to me. I’m sorry.”

The skepticism was bipartisan, with Republican Sens. Mike Rounds of South Dakota and Tom Cotton of Arkansas indicating doubts about various parts of the proposal. Meanwhile, Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, questioned whether the funding for a new service makes sense when readiness for existing military branches is dragging.

“Is it prudent to take on what would be a fairly disruptive element of a new aspect of the services in the United States military when the current five services, let’s face it, are not up to the readiness that they need to be?” Sullivan asked the panel.

Several senators asked about the uncertain role for the National Guard and Reserve components in a Space Force, something that the legislative proposal kicked down the road to fiscal 2021. In response, Dunford argued the department needs to start somewhere.

“There are a number of issues unresolved, and the real question in front of the committee is: Do we stand up that organization and get that four-star leader singularly focused on what the right organizational construct is, or do we wait for the perfect organizational construct to stand it up? What I felt was to move out and refine as we go, and the committee will have plenty of time to provide oversight,” Dunford said.

“So the initial, first step to take in this next fiscal year would be to stand up the organization, get the leadership in place and then begin to address these very important issues.”

That argument — that the Defense Department needs to get something up and running, and can work out the kinks as it goes — was one repeated multiple times throughout the event, by both Dunford and Shanahan. Whether the argument will fly with committee members is not yet clear.

Pentagon watchers were closely tracking Shanahan and Wilson’s interactions, as the two have repeatedly clashed over the nature of the Space Force and its associated agencies — including on Tuesday when Wilson used remarks at Space Symposium to take repeated shots at the SDA.

Shanahan, sitting next to Wilson during the hearing, attempted to diffuse that situation early, using the third paragraph of his comments to praise the Air Force for its work in space.

“Let me open my comments on the Space Force by expressing my admiration for our U.S. Air Force. Because of our airmen, and Secretary Wilson’s leadership in particular, we are the best in space,” Shanahan said.

“This proposal is about maintaining the margin of dominance they have given us and accelerating the capabilities we need in this increasingly competitive domain. Establishing the Space Force within the Air Force lets us do just that,” he added.

When the subject of the SDA was broached midway through the hearing, Wilson reiterated her belief that the agency’s plan does not make sense.

Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson’s memo, dated Feb. 28, offers a scathing rebuke of the Space Development Agency, a pet project for both acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan and Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Michael Griffin.

The top Air Force official argues that the Office of the Secretary of Defense, or OSD, has not adequately laid out how to transfer the authority of the SDA to the Space Force, which was provisioned in a Jan. 19 memo by the defense secretary titled “Guidance for the Establishment of the Space Development Agency.”

The SDA also “appears to replicate existing ones already ordered by Congress,” she wrote. She points to a memo by the OSD, which states that the SDA would be modeled on organizations like the Air Force Rapid Capabilities Office, even as the service Air Force has launched a space-focused version of the agency called the Space Rapid Capabilities Office.

“Until the Space Development Agency has a uniquely identifiable mission that cannot be accomplished by current organizations, the plan should not move forward,” she wrote.

Over the past month, Wilson has emerged as a strong critic of the SDA, telling reporters in February that she still had questions about the mission of the organization and over what it could do differently or better than existing entities.

She has since announced her resignation and is set to leave her office in May. However, her dissent is notable, because the next Air Force secretary will be tasked with leading the U.S. Space Force ― if its creation is approved by Congress. The new military branch is slated to at some point be tasked with overseeing the SDA, which is currently under Griffin’s purview.

Asked by media Wednesday why he felt the Air Force and Wilson were being so vocal in pushback against the SDA, Griffin paused for several seconds before saying “I’m not sure I really know. and so I won’t comment. I can’t get into people’s motives and not everybody who has spoken may have even the same motives. I note, and it has been noted within the media, that the Air Force has broadly disapproved of secretary Shanahan’s decision. Everybody can’t always agree.”

Griffin then went on to note that the Air Force has been resistant to change before, citing the introduction of the ICBM and unmanned systems, before adding “I would not choose to single out the Air Force, or indeed any other entity. It is a general rule that large, existing organizations do not respond well or favorably toward new innovations. It would be an exception if they did embrace a new idea. So, I’ll just leave it at that.”

When the Pentagon released its legislative proposal for the Space Force, there was noticeably little included about the SDA. A senior Pentagon official, however, said that was by design to focus the attention on the Space Force creation, adding that a new memo on the SDA is coming, perhaps as soon as this week.

On the disagreement between Wilson and Griffin on the role of the SDA, the official was blunt: “Dr. Griffin will win in the end on this one.”

Job cuts

Wilson’s memo responds to a second memo out of the OSD, titled “Qualification of Savings to Establish Space Development Agency,” which lays out an argument that as many as 55 civilians and 75 military jobs could be cut across the current space portfolio, which would offset the projected government staff requirement for the SDA.

Those cuts would come from the Missile Defense Agency (20 civilians and 15 military personnel), the U.S. Air Force Remote Sensing Directorate (15 civilian and 30 military), and a trio of service divisions focused on protected satellite communication, wideband SATCOM and advanced development (20 civilian and 30 military).

A fully staffed SDA will feature approximately 225 personnel, made up of 67 civilian, 45 military and 113 support contractors, per the memo. That would leave a net cut of 18 jobs across the department, which the qualification memo states will definitively save the Pentagon money.

In essence, the SDA would be a leaner, less bureaucratic alternative to existing space procurement organizations by stripping personnel from a number of agencies and eliminating a handful of Defense Department positions altogether.

But that’s too risky a gamble to make without further analysis, Wilson argues in a different memo to Griffin dated Feb. 26.

“The ‘Quantification of Savings’ paper suggest that harvesting personnel from existing office that perform critical missions today ‘could’ result in savings, without addressing the risk to such programs if personnel were removed,” Wilson wrote. “The plan should not move forward until the proper analysis has been completed and coordinated. Absent rigorous supporting analysis, validation and verification of such savings, we do not recommend Secretary of Defense certification.”

Griffin, however, says he sees the work being done by SMC and the space RCO as separate missions from that of the SDA. On the RCO, he pointed out that SDA cuts across the entire department while the Air Force office is more limited, although “I would be utterly surprised if we didn’t have, from space development agency, some useful working relationship with space RCO. I would expect that we would.”

As to SMC, “they have a very important function with continuing to produce and oversee the legacy space architecture, the things we have in space today that we surely don’t want to give up. but this is a new capability with new functions,” he said. “It’s not about SMC. It’s about creating new capabilities as rapidly and as effectively as we can.”

In addition to criticizing the structure of the SDA, Wilson also lambasted its first major procurement effort.

The first big project the SDA will work on is what the memo calls the “transport layer” in low-Earth orbit — a large number of mass-produced small satellites networked together to provide “global, persistent, low-latency data transfer between and among the space and ground elements and the strategic and tactical military users of the next-generation architecture.”

In the long term, the SDA will be charged with procuring “not just the data transport layer but additional capabilities such as an alternate positioning, navigation and timing system, low-latency targeting, and improved detection, tracking and defense of ballistic and advanced missile threats.”

However, Wilson argues that the Air Force and the director of the Cost Analysis and Program Evaluation office are still conducting detailed work on whether that disaggregated satellite architecture will be better than current plans.

“It is premature to conclude that a massively proliferated low-Earth obit architecture would be more resilient in the face of deliberate attack than alternative, similar price architectures,” she writes. “The proposed plan requires in-depth supporting analysis and validation by the warfighting.”

Griffin, for his part, cast the need for the transport layer as long-overdue, saying “this is not a task currently being received by the air force or anyone else. It’s not a duplicative task. It’s a new thing we’re doing to meet known mission requirements for a threat driven space architecture.”

“My guess is that’s going to keep me busy for a while,” he later said, when asked if the SDA has plans for other future projects. “We’re not trying to solve world hunger here. We’re taking on a specific and very important challenge that means a lot tome personally, and that’s my first priority.”

Long-standing differences

Speaking last month at the Air Force Association’s winter meeting in Orlando, Wilson was upfront about her skepticism of the SDA.

“I have some concerns about what is the mission of this entity, why do we think it would be better than what we currently do, and what exactly will it be focused on conceptually,” she said. “I expect there would be public discussions on this. Conceptually, it would be stood up and then rolled into a Space Force, which means that it would be in a new agency that would exist for probably less than a year. So I think there [are] still questions.”

The fight over the SDA is, in many ways, a fight over who controls the future of the space portfolio. Getting the Space Force to live within the Air Force, even if just temporarily for a few years, was a major win for Wilson and her team. But the SDA exists outside the Air Force, and will only move within the Space Force when, or if, that new branch stands up independently.

Notably, the fiscal 2020 budget request included $306 million to stand up the headquarters of the Space Force, establish U.S. Space Command and create the Space Development Agency — and of those three, the SDA got the most money, with $149.8 million in new funding that cannot be transferred from other parts of the budget.

It’s unclear what this money will go toward. The budget provides a general description of the role of the SDA, saying it will “will have a development mindset and will be focused on experimentation, prototyping and accelerated fielding, as well as leveraging commercial technologies and services.” However, it does not lay out why the SDA’s stand-up costs are equal to that of U.S. Space Command and the Space Force combined, especially as the SDA — with 20 transfers and 30 new employees — is smaller than the other two offices.

Asked about that dollar figure, Griffin declined to comment, but said details will be available when the Pentagon’s j-books are released in the near-future.

In the past, Shanahan and Griffin have talked about the SDA as the core of what the Pentagon will do in the space domain. In October, Shanahan described it as “where all the players go” if they want to do something with space assets, later telling Defense News that he needs someone in that job focused on how to architect common standards across the department.

“This is that integrated environment that we have to protect, and the best way to be able to provision for the future is to develop a foundation that’s rooted in a very well-defined architecture and standards,” Shanahan, then the deputy secretary, said. “And the standards aren’t just simply for interfaces, these are design standards, you’re manufacturing standards, these are test standards — so it’s a suite of those things.”

This story was updated 3/13/19 at 4:40 PM to reflect Griffin’s comments.

The memo, signed out by acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan March 12, immediately stood up the SDA as a new office under the direction of Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering Mike Griffin.

The office will be directed by Fred Kennedy, the current director of the Tactical Technology Office, which falls under the purview of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

Per his bio, Kennedy, a retired Air Force colonel, served as senior policy adviser for national security space and aviation in the National Security and International Affairs division of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy during the Obama administration.

“The SDA will define and monitor the Department’s future threat-driven space architecture and will accelerate the development and fielding of new military space capabilities necessary to ensure out technological and military advantage in space for national defense,” Shanahan wrote in the memo. “The SDA will unify and integrate efforts across the Department to define, develop and field the novel and innovative solutions necessary to outpace advancing threats.”

Per the document, the SDA will be responsible for guiding programmatic policy developments for next-generation military space capabilities that reside within the Defense Department. In essence, it will serve as the unifying office for the department on space acquisition.

The director will have special hiring authorities for civilian employees to bring in highly qualified experts and noncompetitive short-term hires for up to 18 months.

Shanahan and Griffin have previously talked about the SDA as the core of what the Pentagon will do in the space domain. In October, Shanahan described it as “where all the players go” if they want to do something with space assets, later telling Defense News that he needs someone in that job focused on how to architect common standards across the department.

“This is that integrated environment that we have to protect, and the best way to be able to provision for the future is to develop a foundation that’s rooted in a very well-defined architecture and standards,” said Shanahan, then the deputy secretary of defense. “And the standards aren’t just simply for interfaces, these are design standards, you’re manufacturing standards, these are test standards — so it’s a suite of those things.”

However, the idea has been criticized by outgoing Air Force Secretary Heather Wilson, who in February said there should be public conversations on whether the organization was necessary.

“I think there’s still concern — I know I have some concerns — about what is the mission of this entity, why do we think it would be better than what we currently do and what exactly will it be focused on conceptually,” Wilson said last month at the Air Force Association’s Air Warfare Symposium.

While the SDA is independent for now, the plan is to transfer it to a stand-alone Space Force, something Shanahan said remains the long-term plan, writing: “Coordination of requirements and transition decisions will occur through the normal processes once SDA transfers to the U.S. Space Force. Until that time, the Department will evaluate additional consolidation of space development organization and management.”