The House passed the FY2012 National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 1540) this afternoon by a vote of 322-96.

As reported (H. Rept. 112-72) from the House Armed Services Commtitee (HASC) the bill authorizes $660 billion in FY2012 for the Department of Defense (DOD) and national security activities of the Department of Energy (DOE). The $660 billion comprises $553 billion for DOD’s base budget, $119 billion for overseas contingency operations, and $18 billion for DOE.

What happens next is anyone’s guess. The Hill newspaper reported on May 15 that defense experts consider the bill an “illusion” and “there is littlle chance any other military spending bill will approach the size” of the HASC plan.

The House passed the FY2011 intelligence authorization bill (H.R. 754) today by a vote of 392-15.

House approval came despite objections by the White House in a Statement of Administraiton Policy (SAP) issued Wednesday. Among other complaints, the SAP states that the bill includes a “signification reduction of funds below the current funding level … from a technical collection program [that] will negatively impact an acquisition that is successfully achieving acquisition milestones. This action comes at a time when the [Intelligence Community] is conducting a Congressionally-requested assessment of an alternative to the Administration’s program. Until that assessment is complete, a significant reduction or redirection of funds is unwarranted and will likely jeopardize the scheduled operational capability of this critical national security collection system.”

The reference to a “technical collection program” is assumed by many to refer to a satellite intelligence collection system. The disagreement between Congress and the White House seems to continue a long-running dispute about whether building a few, large, “exquisite” electro-optical imagery collection satellites is better than building a constellation of more, but smaller satellites. This dispute is one of the reasons it was so difficult for Congress to pass the last intelligence authorization bill.

In April 2009, the Obama administration chose a policy of updating the exquisite capabilities on which the nation has long relied instead of pursuing the alternative of buiding a constellation of smaller satellites. Boeing’s Future Imagery Archiecture (FIA) program, cancelled because of significant cost overruns and schedule delayes, was emblematic of the latter approach and was going to be replaced by the Broad Area Satellite Imagery Collection (BASIC) program. Lockheed Martin builds the traditional “exquisite” systems.

The National Journal (subscription required) reports that the Administration’s objections to H.R. 754 took lawmakers by surprise. The chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, Rep. Mike Rogers (R-MI), issued a statement after the vote praising the bipartisan support of his Democratic counterpart, Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-MD).

Action now moves to the Senate. The Senate Intelligence Committee has reported a bill (S. 719) that seems very similar to what the House passed. Senator Dianne Feinsten (D-CA), chair of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, has been a strong proponent of the BASIC approach. Critics assert that the requisite technology is not yet available for such a system.

The Administration had other objections to H.R. 754, but they do not appear to be directly related to satellite capabilities.

The House Armed Services Committee (HASC) is busy working on the FY2012 National Defense Authorization Act (H.R. 1540), which includes the Department of Defense’s (DOD’s) annual request for national security space activities. The six subcommittees are marking up their portions of the bill this week, with full committee markup scheduled for next week.

Most national security space programs are under the purview of the Strategic Forces subcommittee. Yesterday, Strategic Forces subcommittee chairman Mike Turner (R-OH) and ranking member Loretta Sanchez (D-CA) released an overview of the action taken by their subcommittee. In total, the subcommittee recommended cutting $79.5 million from the $10.2 billion request for unclassified space activities (classified space activities are dealt with separately and, obviously, are not publicly discussed). The following list of changes is taken verbatim from the subcommittee’s press release.

National Security Space

• Overall, a decrease of $79.5 million for National Security Space Programs from the $10.2 billion request. Specifically, the mark includes:
• Transfer $142.2 million from Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) for evolved AEHF military satellite communications (MILSATCOM) to a separate program element for Next-Generation MILSATCOM Technology Development.
• Decrease of $124.5 million (from $134.5 million) for launch support services for Deep Space Climate Observatory (DSCOVR) mission;
• Increase of $20 million for Space-Based Infrared System (SBIRS) data exploitation;
• Increase of $25 million for Defense Reconnaissance Support Activities.
• AEHF Procurement-Authorizes the Secretary of the Air Force to enter into a fixed price contract to procure two Advanced Extremely High Frequency (AEHF) satellites and incrementally fund those two satellites over five years. Also requires the Secretary to submit a report on contract details, cost savings, and plans for reinvesting cost savings into capability improvements for future AEHF satellites. Does not authorize advanced appropriations, as OMB requested, but meets Air Force intent.
• Commercial Imaging Satellite Contracts-Repeals Sec. 127 from the Fiscal Year 2011 National Defense Authorization Act, which specified that any Department of Defense contract for commercial imaging satellite capability or capacity after December 31, 2010, shall require that the commercial imaging telescope have an aperture of not less than 1.5 meters.
• Joint Space Operations Center Management System-Limits Fiscal Year 2012 funds for Release One of the Joint Space Operations Center (JSpOC) Management System (JMS) until the Undersecretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology and Logistics (AT&L) and Secretary of the Air Force provide the JMS acquisition strategy.
• Harmful Interference with Global Positioning System (GPS)-Directs the Secretary of Defense to notify Congress if he determines a space-based or terrestrial-based commercial communications service will cause widespread harmful interference with DOD GPS receivers.
• Plan for Joint Space Operations Center-Directs the Commander, Air Force Space Command to develop a continuity of operations plan for the Joint Space Operations Center by March 2, 2012.
• Assessment on satellite operations efficiencies-Directs GAO to provide an assessment of the Department’s efforts to modernize its satellite operations capabilities and identify commercial and other government best practices that could improve its satellite operations by February 6, 2012.

Jeff Kueter, President of the Marshall Institute, is urging that the United States not adopt the so-called “EU Code of Conduct.” The Code, adopted by the European Union (EU) last fall, creates a set of “rules of road” for how nations and organizations should operate to provide safety, security and sustainability in space.

While agreeing that “Responsible behavior in space is an admirable goal, just as nations acting responsibly on Earth is an admirable goal,” Kueter argues in a newly released paper that “simply stating principles” does not achieve either goal. “The EU Code is a solution in search of a problem,” he continues, and “its practical contributions to U.S. security in space are limited and potentially harmful.”

Kueter organized a panel discussion about the Code earlier this year. Somewhat surprisingly, the three panelists, all of whom served in the George W. Bush Administration, and one who stayed on and worked for the Obama Administration, thought that the U.S. should support, if not sign, the agreement. Kueter says that the Obama Administration is close to adopting the agreement through executive order.

The National Security Space Strategy (NSSS) released by the Department of Defense (DOD) and Director of National Intelligence earlier this month “recogniz[es] reality: we are not alone, we can’t do everything alone,” said the Honorable Michael B. Donley, Secretary of the U.S. Air Force. His comment was made during an event organized by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) that featured a conversation with top U.S. military officials on the implications of the strategy for the DOD. The event was moderated by CSIS’s President and CEO, Dr. John J. Hamre.

Of this first dedicated national security space strategy, the Honorable William J. Lynn III, Deputy Secretary of Defense, explained that it demonstrates the importance of the space domain to U.S. national security and is meant to deal with “these changed circumstances” where space is congested, competitive, and contested. These factors require a new way of thinking of ways to protect not only U.S. space assets, but also the industrial base.

Critical to the first task are improvements in space situational awareness (SSA). SSA, simply put, is the ability of knowing precisely the location of space objects and where they are going. General James E. Cartwright, Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that space deterrence made improved SSA a critical need both for identifying anomalies and for attribution in the event of an attack. The NSSS states that the United States reserves the right of self-defense, but “all of space is not in space,” he added, and norms are needed to know what the appropriate response to a potential attack would be. SSA, which he said “raises the bar in deterrence,” has to be part of the discussions because “absent that, you really are in a large area of ambiguity.”

With respect to protecting the industrial base, Lynn said that the DOD was taking steps to modify its acquisition approach, with a goal to infuse greater stability. Block buys and fixed price contracts are needed to increase predictability. The changes also include a different approach to buying launch vehicles. Donley described interagency coordination efforts with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO) to “decouple launchers from payloads,” allowing agencies to buy launchers on a more routine basis.

A vital step to support the industrial base, added Lynn, is export control reform, which has been an important priority of President Obama’s Administration. The current rules date back to the Cold War, and now “seem to be designed to keep technologies from our allies,” he said. This, agreed Cartwright, is part of the old approach to “go it alone,” which he said was simply not affordable. Just as new constructs are needed for transactions with industry, so are new constructs needed for partnering with other countries. “If we are gonna fight in a combined way, we gotta find a way to operate in a combined way,” he argued. He said that Russia was one of the countries where space could provide an opportunity for cooperation.

Greater cooperation may require greater coordination. The European Union’s draft Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities has been a topic of discussion recently as one potential way forward in developing norms for responsible behavior in space. In response to a question about the code, Lynn said that while it was not in the national security space strategy, the code is “frankly, very consistent with some of the goals of the [NSSS]” and was therefore of a lot of interest. Discussing the benefits of this approach, he said that as opposed to other proposals that tend to be restrictive, the code had “important protections,” including acknowledgement of the right of self-defense, and that, as a voluntary move, it had “strong potential of being a positive step” forward.

A webcast of the event is available on the CSIS website.

The FY2012 budget requests for NOAA and DOD tell more of the story of the restructuring of the National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) ordered last year by the White House.

The DOD budget request includes $445 million for its component of the restructured program, called the Defense Weather Satellite System (DWSS). The budget is based on the assumption that DOD will get $352 million in FY2011, although Congress is still debating the FY2011 spending figures. In 2012, the department says that the $445 million will pay for Northrop Grumman to redesign the spacecraft that it was planning to build for NPOESS into a “smaller and lighter version.” It also will pay for development of two sensors that were originally planned for NPOESS (VIIRS and MIS), spacecraft and sensor subsystems and materials, algorithms, and DOD-specific elements of the common ground system. It is consolidating DWSS funds in its research and development (R&D) account instead of splitting it between R&D and procurement as in the past two years.

NOAA is requesting $1.07 billion for its Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS). That is an increase of $688 million above what the agency is assuming it will get for FY2011, the same as it had for FY2010 ($382 million). Its FY2011 request had included a steep increase for transitioning from NPOESS to JPSS, but NOAA is operating at its FY2010 level under the Continuing Resolution (CR). Thus the increase is pushed to FY2012. The request includes funds to acquire and process data from NASA’s NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) spacecraft. NPP was designed as a testbed for NPOESS, but with the restructuring now will be the first operational satellite in the new civil weather satellite system. It is scheduled for launch this year. The NOAA funds will also continue development of instruments and spacecraft for the first two JPSS satellites.

NOAA is in a more difficult situation than DOD. All of its polar orbiting weather satellites are already in orbit, while DOD has two of its older satellites still awaiting launch.

The NPOESS program was created during the Clinton Administration to reduce the costs associated with having separate military and civil weather satellite systems. After years of cost growth and schedule slips, however, the Obama Administration decided to split the program so that each sector will have its own system again. NPOESS was being procured through the Air Force, which is maintaining its contract with Northrop Grumman and rescoping it to reflect the change to the DWSS program. NOAA is using NASA as its acquisition agent for JPSS, as it does for its other satellites. The first JPSS satellite will use the same spacecraft bus as NPP, being built by Ball Aerospace.

The National Polar-orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System (NPOESS) was doomed to failure according to a set of lessons learned identified by the Aerospace Corporation. Its December 2010 report to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) was posted on NOAA’s website today.

Historically, NOAA and DOD operated separate civil and military polar-orbiting weather satellite systems; NOAA also operates a geostationary weather satellite system. The decision to pursue a “converged” polar-orbiting system to meet both NOAA and DOD requirements was made in 1994 by the Clinton Administration. The Powerpoint briefing by the Aerospace Corporation cites Vice President Al Gore and then-NOAA Administrator James Baker as the architects of the “convergence” plan that became NPOESS. It was a tri-agency partnership among NOAA, DOD and NASA, with NASA serving in a technoiogy development capacity.

The Obama White House dissolved the NPOESS partnership in February 2010 after years of cost growth and schedule slippage. The program was restructured and DOD and NOAA now are returning to building separate systems. NASA is the acquisition agent for NOAA’s satellites and its NPOESS Preparatory Project (NPP) spacecraft, originally designed as a technology testbed for NPOESS sensors, will be repurposed as an operational satellite for NOAA when it is launched later this year. Congress is still debating funding the new NOAA Joint Polar Satellite System and DOD’s Defense Weather Satellite System as part of the FY2011 budget process.

The Aerospace Corporation pulled no punches in its findings about what went wrong. The findings state —

• Chronic unrealistic cost estimation tainted the budget process, dictated the acquisition strategy, distorted management decisions, and set the program up for overruns
• Incomplete, inaccurate assertions of heritage contributed to cost estimation problems and led to significantly optimistic assessments of technical and programmatic risk
• The Government and the prime contractor failed to establish clear, detailed supplier performance expectations and appropriate incentives
• Multiple factors constrained and eventually eliminated the SPD’s authority to make performance trades
• From the start, the mission priorities of the key Convergence stakeholders were divergent. The formulation of the NPP mission created a “nested”, interagency partnership with conflicting risk reduction and climate monitoring mission objectives. The lack of synergy in these partnerships created significant tension in program cost, schedule and performance.
• The acquisition strategy contained two major flaws, including assumption of the future use of the capability trade space to maintain cost and schedule baselines, and an ill-conceived interagency risk reduction mission that co-mingled the DoD and NASA acquisition paradigms
• Lack of a sufficent number of talented, sufficiently experienced staff appropriate to the complexity and scope of the acquisition plagued the program and were [sic] a root cause of program execution problems
• Outside events and pressures impinged on the NPOESS program as it co-evolved with its context, complicating an already difficult program management environment with significant consequences
• Program management decisions were ill-informed and/or distorted by a combination of factors that worked to divert attention from the core, priority mission requirements. The factors included:
  • politically pressured baseline cost constraints
  • a flawed acquisition strategy
  • cost estimation pathologies
  • dysfunction in the governance structure
  • weak staff support
  • subjective and inaccurate assessment of, and credit for, instrument heritage
  • lack of agility in adapting to the changing program context
  • weak/ineffective oversight of contractor efforts
  • constraints on the capability trade space along with the authority to utilize it

The Department of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence just released the long-awaited National Security Space Strategy. An unclassified summary is available at this website.

Three former Bush Administration officials, one of whom stayed on in the Obama Administration to help craft the current National Space Policy (NSP), agreed today that the United States should indicate support for the European Union (EU) Draft Code of Conduct for Outer Space Activities, but not officially sign on to it yet. They spoke at a meeting sponsored by the Marshall Institute on Capitol Hill.

Recent stories in the Washington Times, including one this morning, report that the United States is about to sign up to the draft document, which was adopted by the Council of the European Union on September 27, 2010.

Paula DeSutter, former Assistant Secretary of State for Verification, Compliance, and Implementation, Scott Pace, former NASA Associate Administrator for Policy Analysis and Evaluation, and Peter Marquez, former Director of Space Policy at the White House National Security Council under both President George W. Bush and President Obama, support the EU draft as an alternative to a draft treaty China and Russia are promoting through the United Nations Conference on Disarmament (CD).

The EU code of conduct is a set of voluntary guidelines with no enforcement or verification mechanisms. Instead it spells out what constitutes good behavior that space-faring nations should follow. One question was why the United States or any other country should bother signing a document that cannot be enforced. The answer from the speakers involved aphorisms such as “idle minds are the devil’s playground” or “nature abhors a vacuum” to indicate the document’s ability to divert other countries from promoting less welcome approaches. The prime example cited is the Chinese-Russian Draft Treaty on Prevention of the Placement of Weapons in Outer Space, the Threat or Use of Force Against Outer Space Objects (PPWT). DeSutter went so far as to say that the EU code would “undermine” the PPWT and possibly lead to the end of the CD, both positive developments in her view.

All three speakers stopped short of endorsing a formal U.S. adoption of the EU code, noting that the European Union is consulting with many countries and others might insist on changes. They recommend that the United States wait until the end of the process or risk losing its own leverage over the final wording. The draft code was adopted as an internal EU document that is not subject to negotiation with third countries, but it “invites the [EU] High Representative to pursue consultations with third countries” and “All States will be invited to adhere on a voluntary basis to the Code….”

Another question was, if the United States does agree to it, whether it should be sent to the Senate for advice and consent as is required for treaties. DeSutter said that strictly speaking that is a question for lawyers, but in general she thinks it would be a good idea to put it through though those “tests” to see if the country really supports it. Pace and Marquez agreed.

Each of the speakers offered several tweaks in wording, but overall thought the document was solid. DeSutter and Marquez agreed that it was better than anything the United States could have drafted, although Marquez asserted that we already have expressed our own code of conduct in the principles section of the Obama National Space Policy. He finds the overlap between those principles and the EU code of conduct to be quite close, making it fairly straightforward for the United States to agree with the European document.

Veteran space journalist Leonard David asked several space policy experts what would constitute “misconduct” in outer space at a time when an international effort is underway to reach agreement on a “Code of Coduct for Outer Space Activities.” The answers are revealed in Mr. David’s Space.com column today.

In summary, Mr. David writes:

“From some experts, you get the sense that there’s a quest under way for a Robert’s Rules of Order for space, with a shot of Emily Post etiquette mixed in for good measure.

“Meanwhile, other analysts lean toward an approach much like Martha Stewart’s outlook for tidiness – a recipe for spacefaring nations to adopt and avoid collective mayhem in the cosmos.”

One of the experts interviewed for the article is Michael Krepon, co-founder of the Stimson Center in Washington, D.C. Mr. Krepon just published an essay recounting the roles that he and the Stimson Center played in initiating the idea of a Code of Conduct in lieu of a treaty banning weapons in outer space, as proposed by China and Russia.

The Stimson Center’s Space Security Project, which he heads, was created in 2002 and has worked diligently domestically and internationally to find a way to help keep space “as free as possible from destabilizing and dangerous developments,” in Mr. Krepon’s words. The future of the Code of Conduct is unclear, however, he adds. Noting that it is “gaining adherents,” he urges the Obama Administration to “somehow find the energy to add this objective to the very burdensome agenda of senior officials. If this is not possible, a rare opportunity will be missed.”

Editor’s note: We thank Mr. David for asking us the question, too, and publishing our reply.