CHANTILLY, VA -- In a warning to industry, Space Force acquisition chief Frank Calvelli said today that he would resurrect a years-old contractor watch list to drive discipline in acquisitions and name companies that are performing poorly.
The watch list, a kind of scarlet letter contractors will have to wear if the government assesses they have failed to meet expectations for key acquisitions, is not disclosed to the public. However, it is shared with contracting officers in the Pentagon, and according to Calvelli, the number of companies named on it will soon grow.
“We have the authority in the department to use the [watch list]. We’re starting to use that,” he said to an industry-heavy audience during the 2023 Defense and Intelligence Space Conference here.
Noting how the concept of the watch list was borrowed from the National Reconnaissance Office, where he previously served as principal deputy director, Calvelli said NRO officials would do more with the list than just circulate it internally to ensure industry is held accountable.
“Typically, at the NRO when somebody didn’t perform, we would put them on the [list] and we would notify Congress and all the committees that they weren’t performing as well. And we’re taking a similar approach in the department,” he added.
When asked how the contractor watch list, which was created in 2018, would be employed differently than in years past, Calvelli indicated that the major change would be using it.
“I’m going to be honest, I don’t know how often we’ve used it in the past, but we’re stepping up our game now,” he said.
Calvelli first suggested use of the watch list in a series of tenets for space acquisition he enumerated in October. Explaining those tenets to the audience, he reiterated a simplified formula for space acquisitions, calling on launch within two-to-three years of inking a contract, using existing technology, building smaller satellites and using fixed-price agreements.
He also put the onus on government contracting officers to pick the right vendor, saying they need clear requests for proposals and strong source-selection criteria.
“When you get to the mode where you’re just reviewing the proposal, and you don’t take into account anything you know or knowledge about the company . . . you can end up rewarding a significant space program to a part of a company or to a company that has absolutely no experience and no chance of actually executing the program,” he said.
Calvelli additionally doubled down on previous comments that the Pentagon is not in need of large satellites, though he did leave the door open for intelligence community missions that could require bigger systems.
“From a physics perspective I haven’t seen too much where we have to stay big, unlike my friends in the IC,” he said. He did not elaborate on what the different needs might be.
His immediate focus, he said, is executing on several programs this year: among them, a new space domain awareness system called the Advanced Tracking and Launch Analysis System (ATLAS); the first increment for Military Global Positioning System User Equipment (MGUE); and delivery of the long-delayed Next Generation Operational Control System (OCX).
“We lose so much time by simply not executing on schedule. And that has to change,” Calvelli said.