The GAO’s watchful eye has fallen upon the SDA.
In a report released this week, the watchdog agency was unimpressed with the SDA’s planning for the Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture (PWSA).
- For the uninitiated, the PWSA is the SDA’s flagship missile-tracking constellation design that is projected to cost the agency ~$35B through 2029.
- According to GAO, the SDA hasn’t done enough to define the project’s parameters and cost estimates at an architecture level, which could lead to ballooning costs and delays.
Part of this, the report argues, is because the SDA has overestimated the maturity of the technology it’s calling on its contractors to deliver. These contractors—names like Lockheed Martin, L3Harris, Northrop Grumman, and York Space Systems—are experienced satellite manufacturers with assets on orbit. The report alleges, however, that since the contractors are adding specialized equipment to these satellites, the items are not actually as mature as they purport to be.
“In some cases, the items SDA identified as commercial items were used in different applications or configurations,” the report states. “Our prior work on space acquisitions found that first-time integration of new technology, with technology that has already been proven, can be difficult.”
Laundry list: The GAO made six recommendations to keep the SDA and its contractors on track.
- Conduct technology readiness assessments for each new critical tech element, starting with Tranche 3.
- Defer to the Secretary of the Air Force to make sure that the SDA is talking to the other military branches regarding requirements and development.
- Build a prioritized backlog to better keep track of how architecture goals are progressing.
- Keep a schedule of architecture progress that contains activities from both the government and its contractors.
- Require contractors to provide cost and software data numbers.
- Establish cost estimates per tranche and keep the costs updated, starting with Tranche 3.
Of these recommendations, the SDA concurred with all but the fifth on requiring cost information from contractors. The DoD said it would continue to stick with its existing framework for requiring cost estimates from contractors. The GAO did not revise its recommendation.
