COLORADO SPRINGS — The rollout of new portfolio managers across the Defense Department could have an acute impact on organizations like the Space Development Agency (SDA), which “probably won’t” carry the same name in the future as a result, according to its acting director.
“I don’t want to predict the future, but five years from now, they probably — the names of the organizations will be different than what you see today,” Gurpartap (“GP”) Sandhoo told reporters today during a media briefing here at the Space Symposium conference.
“There probably won’t be an SDA or Space RCO [Rapid Capabilities Office] or SSC [Space Systems Command], there will be something else. What that ends up looking like is TBD,” he said.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth last year unveiled a sweeping effort to reform Pentagon acquisitions, rolling out a new portfolio acquisition executive model that would group programs by missions under a single manager. The Pentagon intends to delegate more acquisition authorities to those individuals, and is working with Congress to provide them greater flexibility to shift funds between accounts.
The Space Force plans to finalize its portfolio structure within the next couple of months, a top service official said here Tuesday.
SDA, Space RCO and SSC each focus on different missions. SDA launches satellites to low-earth orbit, where the agency is currently building out separate missile tracking and data transport constellations. Satellites bought by SSC, on the other hand, are usually for medium- and high-earth orbits. Space RCO, by comparison, is a relatively smaller office that seeks to quickly field cutting-edge commercial tech across orbits.
Representatives for the RCO and SSC did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
While the Space Force’s various acquisition arms may take a different shape down the road, Sandhoo emphasized their essential functions will persist.
The portfolio reshuffling “will change things in the Space Force, but what it doesn’t change is the missions the Space Force has to go support,” he said.
Speaking during a later briefing, Air Force Secretary Troy Meink noted that the structure of organizations like SDA is a role model for the portfolio reorganization. Asked whether entities like SDA or Space RCO might be absorbed under new portfolio managers, Meink replied that some organizations are spelled out in law, requiring cooperation with lawmakers on some changes.
“As we normalize [the portfolio structure] across all the department, we’ll be working with the Hill,” he said.
One of SDA’s key projects — the establishment of a satellite constellation that can move data around the globe — has recently been in doubt, as officials ponder whether to cancel a third tranche of the so-called Transport Layer and tap SpaceX for that work instead. Sandhoo today said SDA will field the first two Transport Layer tranches, but he wasn’t sure of the third tranche’s fate. The mission of the data transport constellation will transition to the purview of a new portfolio manager for space-based sensing and targeting, said Sandhoo, who will presumably make that decision.
Sandhoo added that the Transport Layer has now essentially grown in scope. A budding effort called the Space Data Network (SDN) is expected to serve as an overarching architecture linking up various communication constellations, to include the Transport Layer.
“Everything we’re doing on the Transport Layer at SDA should be part of that Space Data Network,” he said.
The Space Force’s new Objective Force plan projecting the service’s future force structure through 2040 explains that the Transport Layer will be absorbed into the SDN’s “backbone,” a mesh network of low Earth orbiting satellites operating in Ku- and S-band frequencies for low-latency, high capacity satellite communications data relay, to provide “mass messaging” to users.
Theresa Hitchens contributed to this report.
