EL SEGUNDO, Calif. -- Earlier this year, a White House statement said America’s defense acquisition workforce is a national strategic asset critical to maintaining military superiority.
Those are powerful words that have particular significance for the warfighters of the U.S. Space Force. The operation – and the might -- of our Navy, Air Force, Army and Marines depends on our superiority in space. We can’t win the joint fight without winning the space fight.
Early Space Force leaders recognized that maintaining U.S. space superiority would require tearing down traditional acquisition silos and integrating stove-piped systems. With the activation of System Deltas (SYDs) in alignment with Mission Deltas (MDs), the Space Force is uniquely ready to answer the Secretary of War’s burning question - Are we accelerating the delivery of integrated capabilities to solve our most pressing operational problems? – with a resounding YES.
The pivot to SYDs, while new, is already delivering wins. One of the first was reducing the launch timeline for GPS-III SV-07 from 24 months to seven months at the end of 2024 and further reducing it to just over three months for GPS-III SV-08 just five months later. In addition, the FORGE program reached major operational milestones in 2025 after transitioning to System Deltas and their corresponding Mission Deltas.
The evolution of SYDs dates back to December 2023 when Space Systems Command stood up two System Delta pathfinders: one for positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) and one for electronic warfare. These System Deltas were aligned with what were then known as Integrated Mission Deltas (IMDs) in Combat Forces Command. The pilot pairings worked closely together, sharing lessons learned, and forming a solid foundation for the creation of eight System Deltas activated by SSC between August and October of last year.
SYDs are all about erasing the divide between acquisitions and operations that exists in other services and that existed when SSC formerly operated as a Space and Missile Systems Center. Today, each SYD consolidates capability development under a single mission-focused structure and is led by a colonel who coordinates directly with an operations and sustainment counterpart in Combat Forces Command (CFC), Space Training and Readiness Command (STARCOM), and/or Space Force component commands. For example, SSC’s System Delta 88 is responsible for acquiring satellite communications capabilities. It is aligned with CFC’s Mission Delta 8, which is responsible for operating satellite communications constellations. Key acquisition decision making occurs at the System Delta Level, allowing for greater agility to pivot and adjust as needed to meet delivery timelines.
That’s a very brief overview of how System Deltas work. Why they work is what really excites me.
Before joining Space Systems Command as deputy commander, I spent almost two years as Commander of Mission Delta 31 and personally witnessed the power of this construct to remove acquisition bottlenecks and get to finish faster.
One of my first moves was to dedicate an entire crew of operators to development testing. That was a Mission Delta action. The development team’s action was to integrate those operators into the development process and listen to their feedback about which capabilities to prioritize. This continuous communication loop meant that when the two sides came into development meetings and test readiness reviews, they were able to focus very quickly on the problems that were critical to fix and identify problems that could wait. Because in today’s threat environment, our warfighters would rather have 50, 60 or 70 percent of a solution today versus waiting months or years for a 100 percent solution.
This is a decided cultural shift away from the days in which we would develop capability against a comprehensive set of requirements and not even show it to operations until it checked every single box on the list. That approach just doesn’t work anymore.
To outpace the threat, our acquisition teams must be in conversations every single day with their operator counterparts. Having that tight organizational linkage between acquisitions and operations sends a clear, consistent, and unified demand signal to the development team and the test community. It allows us to get after the problems that are most important to fix and – based on feedback from operations - it allows us to make informed decisions on what can wait. This natural extension of our centralized PEO structure ensures our lean staff of acquisition personnel are uniquely focused on the warfighting mission rather than the next acquisition milestone.We are still working against requirements, but we are doing so in a smart, prioritized way that allows us to deliver warfighting capability incrementally faster.
Acquisition that takes smart risks informed by the operational environment is a huge win for the Space Force, for Space Systems Command, and for the joint force. And I can say with absolute certainty that this construct is going to help us move faster in space acquisition than we ever have before.
# # #
A version of this article originally appeared in SPACEPOWER magazine..