DOD’s space enterprise continues to evolve its acquisition strategy culture by cancelling contracts for poor performance and emphasizing delivering critical warfighting capability, not future promises, Maj. Gen. Stephen Purdy said Thursday at the Potomac Officers Club’s 2025 Air and Space Summit.
Purdy, the acting assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisition and integration, said that 16 major acquisition programs since May 2022 have been halted early due to performance, size and an inability to focus on speed, resilience or integration. Twelve of these were contract terminations and two were program cancellations while two were restructured.
Purdy said DOD will no longer stand by while companies underdeliver for years, marking a new era of accountability.
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What Is SpEC OTA?
The Space Force, founded in December 2019, is focusing on speed and performance in its approach to business. One of the service’s big contracting initiatives has been SpEC OTA, or using the Space Enterprise Consortium to issue other transaction authorities, which have less contracting regulations than traditional acquisition programs.
The innovative OTA contracting process allows the SpEC to solicit bids from a mix of member companies, including firms who have not previously done business with DOD. Purdy said 87 percent of SpEC OTA’s awards have been non-traditional and have been contracted in 58-155 days, which he called a massive speed increase.
Purdy said his predecessor, Frank Calvelli, laid the groundwork for this culture change in space acquisition. A few of his contracting fundamentals were fixed price awards, 2-to-3 year builds, performing ground software first and focusing on integration. Purdy said he’s been building on those fundamentals while also emphasizing speed with discipline.
Space Force Focus on Speed in Contracting
Another of Purdy’s big initiatives are rigorous acquisition reviews. He has used his authority to issue acquisition decision memorandums, or ADMs, where applicable. The ADMs focus on developing strategy, mitigating “unbounded” risk and streamlining requirements with the ultimate goal of partnering with, and getting to the speed of, commercial businesses. The space acquisition team has reviewed over 60 programs to streamline acquisitions and deliver capability to warfighters.
The ADMs are part of Purdy’s effort to leverage the commercial industry’s rapid technology advancement and manufacturing at scale to provide cheaper and more rapid delivery of space capability to the warfighter. He recently signed an ADM directing a review of commercial options for acquiring new space situational awareness technologies to monitor geosynchronous orbit, according to Breaking Defense. This meant Purdy’s team was evaluating expensive legacy efforts to determine if there were commercial alternatives for their missions.
The Space Force will continue its Fight Tonight program and has $24 million budgeted for the effort. Fight Tonight seeks to find solutions from Space Systems Command’s and Space Operations Command’s workforces that are aligned with the command’s mission of ensuring a secure space domain for all, according to a Space Force statement.
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