Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy. Photo: U.S. Air Force by Eric Dietrich

In 2022, U.S. Space Force’s Space Systems Command got guidance from Frank Calvelli, then the Space Force’s service acquisition executive (SAE), to move to fixed-price contracts, limit non-recurring engineering costs, build smaller satellites and ground systems, field within three year cycles, and hold companies accountable, but this year will see the fruits of that labor, according to Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy, the service’s acting SAE.

In December 2023, Calvelli signed a program manager (PM) fundamentals memorandum that emphasized continual management of program baselines, understanding industry’s motivations and operations, and end-to-end integration of systems.

“We focused 2024 on that PM 101 – PM fundamentals, program execution,” Purdy told an SSC industry days conference in Los Angeles on Thursday. “Then in 2025, really an aggressive culture acceleration. What we did when he left was continually pound that message in and get after program by program, ‘What requirements did we need to change? What contracts did we need to change? What practical steps did we need to change?’ And many of you felt that.”

“Sixty programs were reviewed, and many of them were changed as a result of overt direction from the acting SAE or at the PM and PEO [program executive office] levels,” he said. “Quite a bit of change last year to go after and physically change at a lower level. So I would project that 2026 is the year of execution–execution of our programs and all of these changes that we’ve done and execution of enhanced reforms — all the new reforms that are coming down and the process changes as directed by [the secretary of defense] and the NDAA, with the policy of production first.”

“You’ll see us morphing out of the mode of risk reduction and demos,” Purdy said. “Production units, out the door and into warfighter hands. Why? We see the potential for actual funding increases. We are hopeful that we will get funding increases. If that’s the case, we need to have our act together because that’s a lot of money and a lot of programs coming down with few resources to be able to manage that. It’s gonna be all hands on deck. We don’t have time to be screwing around with our programs frankly and getting down the wrong track.”

Lt. Gen. Philip Garrant, the head of SSC, told reporters on Thursday that he believes space will gain a large share of what President Donald Trump has said will be a $1.5 trillion DoD defense budget request in fiscal 2027.

SSC has done some preliminary planning on such an increase.

“Most of that planning is happening in the Pentagon,” Garrant said. “From my perspective, what I’m looking at is the number of programs, the complexity, the dollar value, and what we know it traditionally takes to execute a program like that and then considering what resources do I have available, and where do I have a little bit of growth to move some people around. It’s very early planning, and no guarantees that any of the money will come to us.”

This story was first published by Defense Daily