A spacex rocket Falcon 9 is removed from Cape Canaavays, Florida, in 2024 carrying four satellites to the Space Development Agency.
US Spatial Force
whether President Donald Trump wants his iron cube-the spatial-based missile protection for the United States he proposed last month-will require tens of billions of dollars and many new satellites.
For the last six years, the Pentagon space development agency has worked on a major part of what is needed: a constellation of its first type of over 1,000 small satellites in the orbit of low land designed to detect omissions of hypersonic missiles and keep tabs 24/7 in mobile releases and other threats on Earth. The SDA was created with a mandate to move quickly and pass many of the snars of red ribbons that have blocked the development of US weapons and swollen costs.
However, in the last month, SDA has been involved in crisis: Derek Tournear, head of the agency, was resting a week before Trump’s inauguration and marched outside Pentagon. Now a bureaucratic struggle of power over the program is slowing down the constellation in the constellation and the future of the agency itself is in doubt.
“Looks like they will just dismantle us,” said one elderly staff stale On condition of anonymity.
The SDA has faced long dissatisfaction among purchasing bureaucrats on the alleged agency’s bypass for their authority, as well as terrain concerns between the Bronze Air Force, said former current and former official officials, and a former air force official , Forbes.
Tournear has openly admitted that he rubbed some officials wrongly, writing in 2023 that he was happy to play “bad police officer” and stiff efforts to make the agency respect what he thought were vain, extended procedures.
By fueling the suspicion of the motives for the Tournear’s suspension, he was said to be under consideration by the Trump team for a higher Pentagon position, where he could have pushed for wider use of faster purchase practices.
When the Tournear was suspended, the Air Force announced it was “waiting for the results of an investigation”. In what, he didn’t say. A person acquainted with the investigation said he included allegations that Tournear communicated improperly during the tendering process with Tyvak, which was one of the two winners of a satellite contract protesting by the loser, Viasat. The Air Force decided earlier this month to cancel $ 254 million for Tyvak and review it.
In the weeks after the Tournear, SDA, a lean organization with a high number of 450 and a $ 5 billion budget, was aimed at two investigations. Former Mac Thornberry is leading an external team collected by the Air Force to carry out a 30-day review of the agency’s performance and methods, and its independent status within the Spatial Force. And last week, the Air Force Inspector General informed the agency’s acting head that it would undergo a weekly investigation in March.
Air Force did not answer questions from stale regarding actions against Tournear and SDA.
Observers said it is a series of extremely powerful movements from the temporary leadership before the new administration appointments were decided.
“Establishment on the Pentagon and the Air Force and even spatial forces on a large scale have had long knives for SDA and specifically Derek since he stood up to be independent,” Senator Kevin Cramer (R-end) said , a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee which has defended the agency. “He sends a cold message to industry and buying professionals” for trying to support the status quo of how weapons are developed, he said.
That status quo is widely regarded as Washington’s efforts to attract the army to oppose the rapidly extended Chinese forces after decades of lightly armed insurgents in Mirest and Afghanistan. The main DOD weapons development programs that have completed in recent years have received an average of 11 years from start to finish, three years after the already glacier plans, according to a 2024 report by the Government Liability Office.
Poor performance includes dozens of large geostational satellites that the military supports for communications and supervision. They cost billions of dollars each and take five to 10 years to do. And because their positions are popular, they would make light goals the first day of a fight with the shooting.
SDA was created in 2019 as an experiment to change all this. Its mission was to build a scattered constellation of small satellites in the orbit of the low land, now called the architecture of the fighting fighting space, or PWSA. Such a constellation would be able to do a better job to follow the developing threat of hypersonic missiles – and would make it more expensive to overthrow any of the smallsats with a rocket than to build and start a replacement.
That organization had to run with scissors. They had to be clumsy.
By borrowing a page from smartphone manufacturers, SDA would follow a spiral development pattern, laying new bunches of satellites every two years and making improvements in each of them rather than trying to build the perfect system immediately . To reduce the costs, this would invite offers for each installment instead of making it a winner to receive the entire project.
To get around the normal shopping process, SDA hired a slightly used alternative, faster called middle level of purchase. And SDA gained convention support, which helped her avoid the red bar and maintain its independence as she moved to the Spatial Force, which was also created under Trump’s administration, but remains part of the Air Force.
Derek Tournear, Director of Space Development Agency
Photo Dod by Lisa Ferdinando
SDA has had some obvious successes. She launched her first group of 27 satellites only 27 months after ordering them – and at a relatively affordable $ 14 million in fixed price for satellite. They successfully demonstrated skills that are essential for the construction of the large network projected, including the passage of back and forth data between satellites through lasers, detect missile omissions, and transmitting communications in coded 16 army format from space For the first time, in a plane carrier in the Pacific.
These successes are not in any small part because of the Tournear, according to the staff. They say he is a charismatic leader who persuaded talented people in the private industry to receive large pay reductions to join the agency. A tournear way helped in the speed of progress was acting as something of a human shield for his program managers to protect them from Bureaucratic work Scut, responding to requests for information from the chain of command. And sometimes he would refuse to attend meetings that looked like the time consuming.
“There were things we would ignore,” SDA staff said. “They found it angry.”
Among those who are dissatisfied with the SDA were high -ranking officers in the space force, who believed it should be directed by the space systems command, the main body within the service that develops satellites and other space systems, said a former forces official high air, said Forbes.
They included Lieutenant General Phil Guard, the current SSC commander, the official said. The guarantor was appointed chairman of the SDA after the suspension of the Tournear, rather than the Tournear MP, as it would be customary. This raised objections from Senator Cramer, who said it was a step towards overthrowing the Congress legislation established by SDA as an independent unit, reporting directly to the Chief of Space Force for Operations and Head of Air Force Purchase for its efforts of development.
The guarantor was replaced at the beginning of February as head of office by William Blauser, deputy director of the Air Force Rapid Skills Office. But in a few weeks the guarantor was there, the SDA official said he surprised the dangers SDA was taking, saying he rose to the level of irresponsibility for the first tranche.
This kind of criticism lacks the point of what SDA was created, said a former high-ranking staff stale. “That organization had to run with scissors. They had to be clumsy. “
To be sure, all were not working perfectly in SDA. Brass Dod blocked it from the use of commercial satellites outside the shelf, as it was originally predicted, about concerns to rely on private sector companies that may fail or change their business strategies. Problems of the chain of supply with components in satellites in the first phase of its constellation, which includes 158 satellites, forced the Tournear to delay the first omissions from last September to April.
Prior to its suspension, the Tournear was fighting whether to push the schedule further or launch satellites with a reduced group of skills.
President Trump’s executive order to create Iron Dome gave an incentive to the SDA signature project last month, setting the goal of accelerating the SPA.
But if this is to be done by SDA in its current form it remains an open question. Employees worry that even if his independence is held, SDA can get a new permanent head that has a lower rank than Tournear, which was the civil equivalent of a three -star general. In the hierarchical pentagon, this can make them more vulnerable to bronze pressure.
And there is an additional wild card of what he cuts will seek to perform at the Pentagon – for beginners, SDA is said to cut 45 test workers, 10% of its account – and what its leader, Elon Musk, thinks for SDA. Spacex built satellites for the PWSA test phase, but did not offer for the next two installments. The company was not interested in modifying its satellites to operate at the highest height required by SDA.
Sen. Cramer said the case against Tournear seems to be small and he thinks agency opponents are realizing that they “overestimated” their hand.
But the riots show the profound problems that those who seek to take the Pentagon to take the pace with weapons development, said Todd Harrison, a defense analyst at the American Institute of Enterprises. “Easy is easy to talk about moving faster, risking, using commercial. But it is much harder to stomach the essential mistakes and failures that come along with it. “
More by Forbes