David Deptula: Which parts of the Air Force acquisition organization do you see migrating to the Space Force? And are there any organizations that will remain with the Air Force but be given acquisition authorities to the Space Force? Let me give you an example, the various directorates within the Air Force Research Laboratory. Besides having a Space Vehicles directorate, there’s always been directorates that have benefited space in the past, such as the Sensors, Materials, and the Directed Energy directorates…
Gen. Arnold Bunch: I’ll start with AFRL. There are certain directorates that will have uniformed Space Force individuals in them. They are going to be executing programs that are priorities for the Space Force. The way we see it right now, it’s all going to be under the Air Force Research Laboratory, executing for the Department of the Air Force. We will get priorities from what General Raymond and his team want us to be doing with S&T dollars, but what what we again want to do it not limit where the Space Force can get the technology in from, or how the rest of the Air Force can use those things developed within the Space Vehicles directorate. We want to make sure we don’t create barriers or cylinders of excellence. The reality is technology doesn’t know its application until you tell it. So we want to make sure we don’t want to inhibit the flow of technology back-and-forth.
The same general structure seems to be true of test & evaluation centers and installation support. Elements will not be moved under the Space Force proper, but will remain part of the existing Air Force organizations but with responsibilities to support the Space Force.
That was a great conversation between Mitchell Institute’s David Deptula and Air Force Materiel Command’s General Arnold Bunch on Aerospace Nation.
Here’s another interesting part:
The really big lesson we learned is that if we put the money into the system, and we tell industry what we want to go do, we can improve the mission capable rate. We saw jumps in the F-16, and it responded in many ways when we put parts on the shelf for our airmen and increased inventory levels. Then we can improve our aircraft availability or mission capable rate. The F-22 we did the same thing, that took more time but we’re seeing the benefits of that now. Many of those were small vendors as we discussed before, we didn’t have quite the demand signal.
I think it was no doubt that mission capable rates can increase if more money is thrown at the problem. But with prioritization of modernization and potential post-Covid declines in budget, that strategy will be increasingly difficult.
One thing to note is that General Bunch omitted the F-35 from the discussion. It doesn’t seem likely that the F-35 will reach its target of $25,000 per flight hour any time soon, with implications on mission capable rates that are achievable. Despite this, the Congress seems intent on increasing the F-35 procurements every year.
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