Here’s a crazy idea for the Pentagon: consolidate all of the military’s communications satellites under the command of one service, the Air Force. That way, program offices and their budgets will fall under the same chain of command, saving the military -- and the taxpayers and the satellite makers -- a whole lot of time and money.
It’s one of several recommendations for building a so-called next-generation MILSATCOM (military satellite communications) architecture found in a report released Wednesday by the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The group argues it's time the Defense Department begins thinking about how to overhaul the Cold War-era satellite network and its management, to be more secure and more affordable.
The problem, or goal, is to figure out how to synchronize the funding and management of the military’s satellite programs. Of course, CSBA’s Todd Harrison, senior fellow for defense budget studies, again has come up with an obviously simple plan for the Pentagon that would streamline everything into a nice, commonsense package: Give them to the Air Force.
“It’s that decentralization and the misalignment of program structures and funding structures that create the problem of synchronization in MILSATCOM systems. And it’s a significant program, and it’s creating inefficiencies,” Harrison told Defense One. “The only way that I see that we can effectively manage synchronization is to align those budgets and programs along the chain of command of one service.
Otherwise I think we’re destined to see these kinds of problems.”
But, as with all things DOD, it’s not so simple/.../