Launch Analysis System News Today

Frank Calvelli told lawmakers that while the Contractor Responsibility Watch List is a helpful tool, he'd like to see its authorities expanded.

Frank Calvelli told lawmakers that while the Contractor Responsibility Watch List is a helpful tool, he'd like to see its authorities expanded.

"[P]roduct development has been slower than anticipated, and the projected date to decommission SPADOC continues to extend further to late FY24, a delay of more than two years from the original timeline," according to the 2023 Annual Report of the Pentagon's Director of Operational Test & Evaluation.

The Space Force has made some visible progress in its "pivot" towards resiliency, but acquisition reform remains a hard slog.

Several troubled programs appear finally set to deliver.

"Big software developments fail," said Air Force space acquisition czar Frank Calvelli. "You have to go to smaller systems."

The programs include GPS OCX, ATLAS and MGUE — three efforts that have faced repeated delays in recent years.

The space operations chief wants systems that can gather "exquisite, high fidelity information about what's going on" in geosynchronous Earth orbit "and beyond," more sensors in the Southern Hemisphere to keep an eye on low Earth orbit and — critically — a better way to fuse data.

The U.S. Space Force faces challenges in integrating the Unified Data Library (UDL) into space situational awareness (SSA) operations, according to a new

Space Force hopes to finally be able to ditch this year its "old clunker" SPADOC computer system for managing space surveillance data.