New Release Books by Yool Kim

The U.S. government has taken several steps to account for the increasing likelihood that future conflicts will extend to space, including the establishment in December 2019 of the U.S. Space Force. The potential for future wars to extend to space is driving an urgent need for assessments of space mission assurance (SMA) to provide decision support. Assessments of SMA may be used as decision support for acquisition and operational decisions in the U.S. Department of Defense and intelligence community. The research described in this report was conducted in 2018 and aims to help the national security space community enhance analytic methods for assessing SMA. The authors describe decisionmaker needs for assessments of SMA, challenges for conducting assessments, the shortfalls that may result from the challenges, and options for addressing the shortfalls. The authors conducted semistructured interviews with decisionmakers to identify decisionmaker needs and shortfalls of assessments provided to them in the recent past. Semistructured interviews were also conducted with analysts to identify analytic methods available and to discuss challenges. Researchers examined a selection of models to better understand the capabilities of available analytic methods and their limitations. The research team also undertook its own assessments and modeling efforts to evaluate potential steps and innovations that could address SMA assessment shortfalls.

As the United States creates the Space Force as a service within the Department of the Air Force, RAND assessed which units to bring into the Space Force, analyzed career field sustainability, and drew lessons from other defense organizations. The report focuses on implications for effectiveness, efficiency, independence, and sense of identity for the new service.

The Space Enterprise Vision (SEV), developed jointly by Air Force Space Command (AFSPC) and the National Reconnaissance Office in 2015, describes an integrated approach to building a force across all space mission areas, coupling the delivery of space capabilities with the ability to defend space capabilities. Achieving this vision requires reducing acquisition time lines and improving integration of the space enterprise. Given that the SEV requires a departure from the way space systems are currently acquired, AFSPC headquarters and Space and Missile Systems Center (SMC) asked RAND Project AIR FORCE (PAF) to assess key barriers to realizing the SEV and recommend ways to overcome those barriers to help achieve the SEV goals. The research team examined a range of potential approaches to support the goals of the SEV, based on a literature review and semistructured interviews with acquisition subject matter experts and sponsor guidance. PAF identified several promising alternative acquisition approaches that merit in-depth examination in this project: modular open system architectures (MOSA), agile acquisition, rapid prototyping. These concepts are not new, but implementing them in a Department of Defense (DoD) setting is challenging for a variety of reasons. Therefore, the examination focuses on likely challenges to implementation and recommendations to overcome them to improve the likelihood of success should these acquisition approaches have a role in the SEV. Each of these acquisition approaches can be implemented independently, but there are instances in which they may be used synergistically, as illustrated in the body of the report.

As Department of Defense plans for the next-generation space systems in an increasingly challenging fiscal and security environment, it is important to apply lessons learned from past space acquisition, which had experienced many difficulties.

The aircraft in the U.S. Air Force are aging, and keeping them healthy and safe is lilkely to require attention to clear policies and regulations on sustaining the aircraft.