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WASHINGTON — A critical challenge facing the U.S. defense industrial base came into sharp focus this weekend at the Reagain National Defense Forum: the ability to rapidly manufacture and deploy advanced military technologies, particularly in space.
A case in point is the Space Development Agency (SDA), a U.S. Space Force organization charged with building the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA), a constellation of low-Earth orbit satellites designed to provide missile warning, tracking, and tactical data capabilities.
Derek Tournear, the agency’s director, pulled no punches in describing the fundamental challenge. “We don’t build anything in the Defense Department,” he said Dec. 7, noting that the agency’s very name is something of a misnomer. The real work, he explained, happens through private sector manufacturers who must scale up production to meet military needs.
Delicate manufacturing ecosystem
The SDA is planning to launch 160 satellites for Tranche 1 of the PWSA starting in spring 2025, a timeline pushed back by at least seven months due to supply chain disruptions. These aren’t just simple communication devices, but complex spacecraft providing tactical data links and missile tracking capabilities.
Some critical components, like encryption devices, have only single sources approved by the National Security Agency. Manufacturers are still recovering from pandemic-related disruptions, and scaling up production from single-digit to hundreds of units has proven more challenging than initially anticipated.
“It’s one of those areas where it’s very difficult from a business proposition,” Tournear explained. Companies are hesitant to invest heavily in manufacturing capacity without guaranteed orders, creating a chicken-and-egg problem for rapid technological development.
Software: The invisible bottleneck
Also concerning is the software challenge. Tournear revealed that the SDA currently relies heavily on foreign entities to write satellite flight software — a potential national security risk. “We want our flight software for our satellites to be written in the U.S.,” he stressed, highlighting the vulnerability of relying on external software developers.
“So let’s not fool ourselves,” he said, “supply chain is not only supply chain and the hardware and being able to build things, but we also need a robust industrial base that can create software, test software, get the software ready to go and build that capability up,” Tournear added.
Gen. Michael Guetlein, vice chief of space operations, painted an even broader picture. The SDA is becoming the “canary in the coal mine” for broader industrial base challenges, uncovering deep-seated issues resulting from decades of industry consolidation aimed at maximizing efficiency.
The solution, according to Guetlein, may require a radical rethinking of industrial strategy. “We have spent decades optimizing our industrial base for efficiency,” he said. “Now, we need to get comfortable with a lack of efficiency to build excess capacity.”
This isn’t just about space satellites. The same challenges are evident in supporting Ukraine’s military needs, where the U.S. lacks the industrial capacity to rapidly produce required weapon systems and munitions. “We are single-supplier deep across multiple fronts,” Guetlein noted.
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