nior Procurement Executive Authority. We also have, obvi- ously, the Other Transaction Authority, which is helpful for attracting nontraditionals. I’d like to say that we’ve gotten a lot of support from the department and probably the thing that’s been most help- ful to us is the Middle Tier Acquisition Authority. That has been a godsend. Having validated requirements under DoD Directive 5000 using the traditional JCIDS [Joint Capabili- ties Integration and Development System] process is just too cumbersome. You can’t move fast enough. For our requirements here at SDA, we use something called the Warfighter Council with representatives from all of the Services and the combatant commands who come up with an informal list of requirements, which we imple- ment on the next tranche of the PWSA. And then we take those requirements to the Middle Tier Acquisition Board. Middle Tier acquisition has really enabled SDA to move quickly. Also, our decision to procure capabilities on a fixed price basis brought in nontraditionals. A lot of those companies can’t do contracting on a cost reimbursement basis be- cause they don’t have the accounting system. For our initial tranche, York Space Systems was one of the performers. They were a very new entity that hadn’t done business with the department before. So bringing them on board using the fixed price contracting mechanism really helped. And we’re still currently trying to expand our performer base to include more nontraditionals. Q Given your contracting background at SDA, DARPA, and NAVAIR, what critical gaps do you see in terms of national security and intelligence in the space realm? A. With respect to our basic and applied research (DARPA and AFRL [Air Force Research Laboratory]), I think there could be some tighter coupling there. I don’t think we have direct agreements with any of them in terms of what tech- nologies are going to flow specifically into SDA. So, I do think if they could codify that [it would be helpful]. The Navy was really smart. When I was at DARPA for the long-range anti-ship missile program, they actually set up a joint program office where Navy folks from NAVAIR were embedded at DARPA. And so, we were really able to have that face-to-face interaction. I’m not seeing that tight coupling with space at that level. So, that would probably be my bigger recommendation. You don’t want to handcuff that relationship, but I do think that the acquisition activi- ties and the R&D organizations could probably talk to each other in a more formal setting. The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) and Space Development Agency (SDA) prepare to launch six satellites to low-Earth orbit on Feb. 14, 2024. The satellites launched from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Space utilizing SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. This included two satellites for MDA’s Hypersonic and Ballistic Tracking Space Sensor and the final four SDA Tranche 0 (T0) Tracking Layer satel- lites of its Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture. Source: Courtesy of Missile Defense Agency
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