DARPA’s Fred Kennedy tapped to lead Space Development Agency

In a memo to Appearing Protection Secretary Patrick Shanahan, Undersecretary of Protection for Analysis and Engineering Mike Griffin designated Kennedy as his option to change into the primary director of the Area Growth Company.

WASHINGTON — Fred Kennedy, head of the Protection Superior Analysis Tasks Company’s Tactical Expertise Workplace, has been chosen to function the director of the Protection Division’s new Area Growth Company.

In a memo to Appearing Protection Secretary Patrick Shanahan, Undersecretary of Protection for Analysis and Engineering Mike Griffin designated Kennedy as his option to change into the primary director of the Area Growth Company.

Shanahan in January determined to place the SDA below Griffin’s portfolio. The designation of Kennedy to steer the SDA comes two months after Griffin enlisted Kennedy to lead a study of how the SDA must be organized. Shanahan requested Griffin to submit a plan by March 1 to ascertain the SDA as a separate protection company.

In a draft memo obtained by SpaceNews, Griffin proposes a funds of $149.eight million for the SDA in fiscal yr 2020 to fund the “preliminary set of next-generation army house capabilities.” The company would begin out with about 50 workers — 30 civilians and 20 army.

The thought of a Area Growth Company first surfaced in August in a congressionally directed report the place Shanahan needed to clarify how the Pentagon would arrange a brand new army department for house. Griffin in an October memo mentioned the SDA is “one of many instruments we supplied up as a means that we’re going to reenergize the house growth tradition, shorten the time cycles that we talked about, carry some new issues to the desk.”

Griffin made the case that the SDA must be below his portfolio so it will probably collaborate with the opposite businesses that he oversees and do space-related work — the Missile Protection Company, the Protection Superior Analysis Tasks Company, the Strategic Capabilities Workplace and the Silicon Valley-based Protection Innovation Unit.

Air Pressure Secretary Heather Wilson had argued for the SDA to be positioned alongside existing organizations like the Air Force’s Space Rapid Capabilities Office. However Shanahan rejected that plan and backed Griffin’s concept of a Pentagon-led company that might be unconstrained by army procurement pink tape. Modifications should be made to protection procurement throughout the board, Shanahan has mentioned, however that might take years, and house is an pressing precedence that can’t wait.

Like Griffin, Kennedy has criticized the procurement tradition within the Protection Division for selecting to pursue pricey in-house developments as a substitute of shopping for know-how out there within the open market at far much less value. Each have been proponents of deploying smaller, cheaper satellites in giant numbers to make U.S. house methods extra resilient to disruptions or hostile assaults.

Kennedy has led DARPA’s Tactical Expertise Workplace since September 2017 after being promoted from deputy director. He had beforehand labored at DARPA from 2005 to 2008 as a program supervisor. Kennedy served 23 years in america Air Pressure and retired as a colonel. One among his posts was on the Air Pressure Area and Missile Methods Heart’s Distant Sensing Directorate the place he labored on multibillion-dollar satellite tv for pc applications.

Throughout his first stint at DARPA, Kennedy labored with Griffin, who was then NASA administrator, on an area experiment for autonomous on-orbit servicing and refueling of spacecraft.

New company to influence jobs, budgets

Since plans to ascertain the SDA first got here to gentle, hypothesis has intensified on what this implies for the Air Pressure Area and Missile Methods Heart, primarily based in Los Angeles. SMC is a subordinate unit of Air Pressure Area Command. Established in 1954, it’s the middle of technical excellence for creating, buying, fielding and sustaining about $6 billion value of army house methods. The middle employs greater than 6,000 army, civilians and contractors.

SMC is undergoing a reorganization known as SMC 2.0 aimed toward dashing up know-how developments by taking an “enterprise” view of house applications versus the standard vertical organizations that run applications with out coordinating with one another, which causes inefficiency and duplication. An trade official who works with SMC mentioned these are helpful reforms however don’t basically change the SMC group, reaffirming Griffin’s perception that the present house procurement construction can’t be mounted and that drastic measures are so as.

Griffin’s memo to Shanahan means that SDA prices can be offset by personnel reductions in different organizations as a result of many roles related within the house procurement paperwork will not be wanted.

Though the Pentagon has the authority to face up a brand new company, by regulation it has to make up the fee with financial savings elsewhere. The secretary of protection has to submit a report back to the chairs of the congressional appropriations and armed companies committees certifying the projected financial savings. “Our evaluation of financial savings exhibits that establishing the SDA will scale back the Division personnel and monetary necessities,” Griffin’s memo mentioned. “Particularly, SDA will use a mixture of present particular hiring, contracting, and acquisition authorities, lean organizational construction, and a streamlined reporting chain to develop and deploy new capabilities rapidly.”

The creation of the SDA, the memo mentioned, “permits a big discount in each the required variety of authorities workers and army members, in addition to the variety of workers of contractors and FFRDCs, wanted to develop and subject the foundational factor of next-generation house capabilities.”

FFRDCs, or federally funded analysis and growth facilities, earn tens of millions of conducting critiques and research for organizations like SMC. One of many largest is the Aerospace Corp., in Los Angeles.

In accordance with sources who’re conversant in Griffin’s pondering on the SDA, the brand new company will not be meant to interchange SMC however will seize items of the house portfolio, which may wipe out a whole bunch of presidency and contractor jobs at SMC.

Griffin within the memo mentioned he’ll work with the Pentagon’s comptroller and “affected organizations to offer fiscal oversight and make determinations to impact transfers of funds, as required, to realign FY 2019 and FY 2020 assets.” He additionally will work with the Protection Division’s value evaluation and program analysis (CAPE) workplace to “consider resourcing for the FY 2021 and past.”

The SDA planning is transferring rapidly as Shanahan mentioned he needed the company to be in place by the tip of March. Griffin’s memo doesn’t point out the precise location of the SDA. DoD sources mentioned Shanahan prefers that or not it’s primarily based within the Washington, D.C. space. Alabama lawmakers reportedly have urged DoD to maneuver the company to Huntsville, nicknamed “Rocket Metropolis,” the place there’s a giant authorities and house trade presence.