Final Frontier

By Christopher J. Castelli / January 21, 2010 at 5:00 AM

The Pentagon’s 2010 Space Posture Review will build on the foundation of similar work by the past two administrations, Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn said today, citing two key topics in the study.

One primary focus of the review is the increasing vulnerability of U.S. space assets and the search for ways to develop less-vulnerable assets for these critical parts of U.S. military and commercial systems, he said at a conference sponsored by the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis and Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

The other primary focus is to create adequate acquisition processes that can deliver space systems at the expected cost, he said. The department wants to bring more predictability into the space acquisition process while recognizing the challenges associated with the technology and the space environment, he noted.

“You don’t get to bring things down from space to fix them once you’ve put them up,” Lynn quipped.

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