During the COVID-19 pandemic, a shortage of electronic components slowed the development of satellites intended for the Space Development Agency. But it's not just parts and subcomponents that are affecting the satellite delivery schedule, the agency's director said.
"Even though it takes a while to build the hardware and the supply chain to actually build satellites, no matter what you see in the schedule on day one, I'll tell you right now... software is always on the critical path, mainly because you can't start with a lot of the software until you have some hardware," He said Derek Tournearwho spoke Saturday at the Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, Calif.
SDA is building a Proliferated Warfighter Space Architecture that will eventually include hundreds of satellites delivered in tranches every two years, with each tranche providing more capability than the last.
A network of hundreds of optically linked satellites will provide two basic capabilities to ground warriors. The first is beyond line-of-sight targeting for time-sensitive land and maritime targets, which includes mobile missiles and ships, for example. The system will provide the ability to detect these targets, track them, calculate a fire control solution, and deliver that solution up to the weapon platform so the target can be destroyed. The second capability is similar to the first, but for enemy missiles that are already in flight.
Right now, Tournear said, the Tranche 0 PWSA is already in orbit. This includes about 27 satellites. Tranche 1 will arrive in a few months, he said, which means that by next year there will be about 160 satellites in space providing operational capabilities to ground service members.
According to him, the Tranche 0 satellites were launched with a delay of about seven months due to supply chain issues arising from the COVID-19 programme, including the inability to purchase resistors.
The start of Tranche 1 will also be delayed, he said, also because of supply chain issues. However, he said that now it is not about resistors but much more complex components.
"We can buy resistors all day long now, but there's a difference between being able to make an optical terminal or a reaction wheel in units of one and being able to ramp it up so that I need 100 of them," He said. "And people were probably a little optimistic about how long it would take them to get their production lines up and running. And we pushed them. We pushed them pretty hard."
Now, he said, the supply chain of parts needed to make satellites has caught up with what SDA needs. But Tournear said satellites don't just need parts, they also need software.
"The supply chain is not just a supply chain in terms of hardware and the ability to make things, but we also need a robust industrial base that can build software, test software, get the software ready to go and build that capability," He said.
According to Tournear, a large part of the industrial base is now dependent on foreign entities that produce software. This, he said, would like to change.
"It's one of the things that we've kind of said we're concerned about at the Space Development Agency," He said. "We want our flight software on our satellites to be written in the United States because that's one of the things I worry about in terms of disrupting the supply chain. And so that's been the bottleneck."
Tournear also made it clear that in building the PWSA, he was looking to the U.S. "industrial base," not just the defense industrial base.
"I want people to also... stop thinking about the defense industrial base," He said. "We are not looking at the defense industrial base. We're looking at the entire industrial base. And by the way, if you happen to do defense as part of that industrial base, more power to you. But we want to leverage the commercial side: hardware and software, because both are critical."
Pentagon/ gnews - RoZ
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