Air Force works on vision of affordable space.

• Author: Magnuson, Stew

* The words "affordable" and "national security space" systems are not often paired together.

The Air Force and other agencies involved in building, launching and operating satellites are better known for cost overruns.

Air Force, National Reconnaissance and Navy satellite programs were for decades plagued by delays that ultimately cost taxpayers billions of dollars. Sending the largest spacecraft to orbit was handed over to a monopoly in 2005 resulting in spiraling launch fees. And often lost in this equation was the inefficient and high price of the ground systems that carry out day-to-day satellite operations.

"Space acquisition isn't broken and we can achieve afford-ability," Lt. Gen. Ellen Pawlikowski, military deputy at the office of the assistant secretary of the Air Force for acquisition, said at the recent Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colorado. There are movements in all three industry sectors--satellite acquisition, ground systems and launch--that have the potential to make space more affordable.

Pawlikowski, the former commander of the space and missile center, asserted that the Air Force had turned around its beleaguered satellite development enterprise.

"Everybody talks about the horror stories," she said. "We need to stop beating ourselves up over space acquisition."

All of the Air Force's highest profile spacecraft acquisitions were at one time delayed by years and suffered from cost overruns. Advanced EHF and Wideband Global System communication satellites ended up being lofted years after their original dates, and hundreds of millions over budget. The space-based infrared system suffered a similar fate, as did GPS II, she noted.

"We figured out how to make those systems affordable," Pawlikowsi said. The Air Force space procurement budget has been reduced from $11 billion to $6.7 billion since the Budget Control Act of 2012 took effect, and the service continues to successfully acquire new blocks of these spacecraft, she said, ascribing some of the success to the Better Buying Power initiatives promulgated by the Defense Department's Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics Frank Kendall.

One change was going from cost-plus to fixed price contracts. That took care of the age-old problem of requirements creep--adding features to a program while it is under development. That has always been tempting for spacecraft developers since the satellites, once lofted, can last 10 to 15 years, and acquisition personnel wanted to ensure they had the most up-to-date technology aboard.

"It disciplines the government because when you have a fixed-price contract you can't change things around as easily because you understand the costs associated with doing that," Pawlikowski said.

The center had to learn to understand and refine requirements and the risks associated with them, she added. As an example, the space fence--a ground-based radar system designed to track spacecraft and...