Space Acquisition - Air Force Space Command

to the point; measurable; and empower the program manager to
get started on his or her way to program success.
This business is never easy, and managing a program is a
contact sport, requiring high energy, flexibility, and commitment.
You need to know many things and manage them, but
you cannot know and manage everything. Hopefully, this article
points you to the issues that are important. Own your risk,
be responsible for your critical path, maintain your program
baseline, get good people and have them in the right spot, and
align authority and accountability while empowering those accountable.
Nothing is more rewarding than seeing a system
for which you were responsible successfully perform critical
functions in space.
Notes:
1
The peace dividend was a popular slogan used during the end of the
Cold War to describe a potential long-term benefit as budgets for defense
spending are assumed to be at least partially redirected to social programs
and/or economic growth. Retrieved on 7 July 2009 from Wikipedia, http://
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peace_dividend.
2
Richard Beckhard, an adjunct professor at the MIT Sloan School of
Management, helped define organizational development as “an effort (1)
planned, (2) organization-wide, (3) managed from the top, to (4) increase
organization effectiveness and health through (5) planned interventions
in the organization’s ‘processes,’ using behavioral-science knowledge.”
Richard Beckhard, Organizational Development: Strategies and Models,
(Addison-Wesley, June 1969), 9.
3
As defined by the International Organization for Standardization
(ISO), ISO 8402:1994: “TQM is a management approach for an organization,
centered on quality, based on the participation of all its members and
aiming at long-term success through customer satisfaction, and benefits to
all members of the organization and to society.”
4
Jiju Antony, Pros and cons of Six Sigma: an academic perspective,
7 January 2008, http://www.improvementandinnovation.com/features/
articles/pros-and-cons-six-sigma-academic-perspective; Initially implemented
by Motorola, Six Sigma is a set of practices that seeks to improve
the quality of process outputs by identifying and removing the causes of
defects (errors) and variation in manufacturing and business processes;
Six Sigma is a trademark/registered trademark of Motorola, Inc., in the
US and/or other countries
5
Here are references to some of the many studies and panels:
(a) Packard Commission, A Quest for Excellence: Final Report to the
President by the President’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Defense Management
(June 1986).
(b) Commission on the Future of the United States Aerospace Industry
(September 2002). See also Thomas S. Moorman, “The Health of the
Space Industrial Base, An Update,” Presented to the Commission on the
Future of the United States Aerospace Industry (Washington DC, 14 May
2002).
(c) Space Acquisitions: Actions Needed to Expand and Sustain Use
of Best Practices, Government Accountability Office (GAO), GAO-07-
730T, 19 April 2007.
(d) Space Acquisitions: Improvements Needed in Space Systems Acquisitions
and Keys to Achieving Them, GAO-06-626T, 6 April 2006.
(e) Defense Acquisitions: Improvements Needed in Space Systems Acquisition
Management Policy, GAO-03-1073, September 2003.
(f) Space Acquisitions: DoD Needs to Take More Action to Address
Unrealistic Initial Cost Estimates of Space Systems, GAO Report GAO-
07-96, 17 November 2007.
(g) Report of the Defense Science Board/Air Force Scientific Advisory
Board Joint Task Force on Acquisition of National Security Space Programs
(May 2003)—otherwise known as the Young Report. Also refer to
its follow-up, 2004.
(h) 2006 Quadrennial Defense Review, Defense Industrial Base Assessment:
US Space Industry (Dayton, OH, 31 August 2007.
(i) Defense Acquisition Performance Assessment Project (2006),
Defense Acquisition Performance Assessment Report (Washington DC:
January 2006); the project was chaired by Lt Gen (USAF, retired) Ronald
Kadish.
(j) National Research Council, Pre-Milestone A and Early-Phase Systems
Engineering: A Retrospective Review and Benefits for Future Air
Force Acquisition, The National Academies Press, 2008.
6
Of course, if these recommendations had been implemented in any
meaningful way, they would have made the execution of space programs
much less risky, and our national space programs would have had much
better success.
7
Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates, submitted statement, Senate
Armed Services Committee, 27 January 2009, 11, http://armed-services.
senate.gov/statemnt/2009/January/Gates%2001-27-09.pdf
8
These laws were first openly described on 5 September 1961 in a
published memo from C. L. Battle to Colonel Bleymaier, www.thespacereview.com/archive/1333.pdf.
9
This thinking reflects some of the best conclusions of Booz Allen
Hamilton, Space Industrial Base Study (McLean, VA, 16 February 2000);
see also Project Air Force’s Mark A. Lorrell and Hugh P. Levaux, The
Cutting Edge: A Half Century of US Fighter Aircraft R&D (RAND Corporation,
1998); and the National Research Council, Review of the Future
of the US Aerospace Infrastructure and Engineering Disciplines (2001).
These studies highlight the importance of challenging engineers. With
system cycle times growing to 20 to 30 years or more, engineers are not
provided enough challenges to keep their skills sharp.
10
Fostering smaller program offices was one of the best things to come
out of NASA’s FBC. NASA set up the Discovery/New Frontiers Program
Office at the Marshall Space Flight Center under this model rather than
using the traditional large program office. This office has been very successful
with a string of exciting and leading-edge science missions (e.g.,
NEAR, Mars Pathfinder, MESSENGER, New Horizons). These programs
have also performed well within cost and schedule when compared to
the traditional program office—the average cost growth is generally 15
percent versus the traditional 30 percent within NASA.
11
Tony Spear, NASA FBC Task Final Report, 31 March 2000, 2, http://
klabs.org/richcontent/Reports/fbctask.pdf.
12
Simple engineering errors were root causes of the failures, but the
real failure was a breakdown of the systems engineering and quality assurance.
Simple engineering errors occur during development of every
space mission; however, they can be spotted and mitigated if there is a
system in place to check, double-check, and review. On FBC missions,
this process was cut thin as a way to reduce cost. Therefore, a junior engineer’s
simple mistake of forgetting to convert an important calculation
from English to metric systems was not caught by the program before the
failure. Even then, when some navigation errors cropped up in the “real”
data, the operators explained them away as insignificant versus checking
on their source.
13
Henry P. Pandes, “Total System Performance Responsibility,” Contract
Management (March 2002), 24-29.
14
James H. Gill, “TSPR Not for Developing Systems,” Contract Management
(August 2002), 26-27, citing Defense Daily International, 22
March 2002.
15
In 1996, the DoD implemented the Space-Based Infrared System
(SBIRS) to update and replace the Defense Support Program (DSP) missile
detection and warning system. However, the program was restructured
several times due to budget and schedule constraints—even the program
goals were revised in 2002, 2004, and 2005. The program suffered
a major set back in 2007 when flight software was tested and failed causing
further program restructuring to occur. Cristina T. Chaplain, “Space
Acquisitions: DoD’s Goals for Resolving Space-Based Infrared System
Software Problems Are Ambitious,” 30 September 2008, www.gao.gov/
products/GAO-08-1073; In 1999, the Future Imagery Architecture (FIA)
program was commissioned by the NRO to design reconnaissance satellites.
According to the New York Times the FIA is “perhaps the most
spectacular and expensive failure in the 50-year history of American spy
satellite projects.” Philip Taubman, “In Death of Spy Satellite Program,
Lofty Plans and Unrealistic Bids,” New York Times, 11 November 2007,
www.nytimes.com.
16
In addition to Battle’s Laws, other rules have been promulgated relating
to the acquisition of complex systems. For example, within Lock-
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